Water trouble

[jonathan-m]

We're finally getting some rain down here in FL, and with that comes all sorts of various water problems with my '66. Most of them are simply water leaks, which I can fix as I find, but yesterday I started having problems with my engine during a storm.
The road I live on tends to accumulate some standing water during storms, not a lot, but enough. I always go very slowly through these areas for the obvious reasons, and to minimize the splashing, but I've noticed that whenever I go through a little bit of water (its really probably no more than an inch or two ) The power steering and the power brakes go out, and I'm left controlling it manually (hence why I avoid the rain like the plague haha). Yesterday I had to drive through water like this again, and when I was about 20 feet from my house, power steering/brakes went out, and then the entire engine cut out. Lights and wipers still worked, but I couldn't get it to turn over. finally after about 5 minutes it fired back up, although it was running like hell, and I crawled it up into the driveway.
I've been scratching my head over how to begin fixing this one for a long time, but I don't know what exactly it is that causes this in the first place.

Can anyone give me a heads up on what's causing that?

Jon