John Jefferson
A Fox meteorologist leaped into action during a live broadcast early Friday morning to rescue a woman trapped in her car amid the deadly Category 4 Hurricane Helene.
Bob Van Dillen was reporting from North Atlanta, Georgia — which has been gripped by flooding and massive gusts — when the woman could be heard frantically calling out for help from her submerged white car in his live shot.
“Oh man — it’s a situation. We will get back to you in a little bit. I’m going to go and see if I can help this lady out a little bit more you guys. I’ll be back,” Van Dillen told viewers.
Van Dillen, who was reporting from Peachtree Creek, described how the water had climbed to “about 23 feet” and was reportedly still rising.
He reassured the trapped woman: “Yeah, I gotcha. I got you loud and clear.”
Fox cameras then caught the moment Van Dillen — who is 6 feet 1 inch tall — slowly carried the trapped woman from her car and through the chest-deep water to safety.
He later appeared on Fox & Friends, telling the co-hosts: “I called 911, it was five minutes, 10 minutes — and you could hear her screaming right? You could hear it through my live shot, real loud.”
Van Dillan said he simply could not wait any longer for emergency services to arrive, and decided to take action himself.
“She was panicking. She really wasn’t making too much sense, and she was still strapped into her car seat,” Van Dillen told Fox & Friends.
“She still had the seat buckle on, and she had her window about this much down and she’s trying to talk to me through that. So I’m trying to open up the door, Ainsley, and the water pressure wasn’t allowing me to do it. So I said, ‘Roll your window down.’ So she rolls it down and … it allowed me to open the door. … The battery is still alive and kicking in that car. In fact, I think the engine is still on … the water itself is relatively warm. The water temperature is about 80 degrees.”
He said it was a “miracle” the water didn’t short circuit the boards and prevent her from rolling her window down.
“That allowed the pressure to be equalized and allowed me to pry the door open, unbuckle her seatbelt, put her on me, in my side,” he explained. “It was good to go.”
More than 37 people have died as Helene continues to the southeast US with heavy rainfall and dangerous winds.
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