A TV weather reporter in Atlanta interrupted his live shot about Hurricane Helene Friday to rescue a woman from a vehicle stranded by rising floodwaters.
In video of the rescue, standing in the rain with the submerged vehicle behind him, FOX Weather meteorologist Bob Van Dillen describes how the woman drove into a flooded area.
He says he has called 911, and she can be heard screaming as he tries to assure her that help is on the way. Then he says to the camera: “It’s a situation. We’ll get back to you in a little bit. I’m going to see if I can help this lady out a little bit more you guys.”
Van Dillen is then seen wading through the water with the woman on her back, carrying her to safety.
That woman had zero survival instinct. She was sitting in her car as the water rose, like once you’re waist deep in your car, maybe unbuckle and try to get on the roof or preemptively open a door before the pressure traps it shut. My God.
Adrenaline with completely fuck up your higher brain functions, unless you’ve trained to cope with it. Its default effects are fight, flight, freeze or fawn. She went into freeze. She likely didn’t want to make matters worse, and couldn’t think it through, due to the adrenaline spike.
A rather dark survey I heard about years ago. Researchers couldn’t find anyone who has self rescued from a submerged car, who hadn’t planned for the eventuality. They had all worked out what to do if that happened to them. Many of the deaths had claw marks on the dashboard, and sometimes they hadn’t even gotten their seat belts off. In the moment, their monkey brain couldn’t even plan that far.
This was exactly my thought as I read and reread this paragraph several times trying to figure out if I was getting it wrong.
“She was in there, she was still strapped into her car and the water was actually rising and getting up into the car itself, so she was about, almost neck deep submerged in her own car.”
