Weatherman stops live broadcast to save woman trapped in 'unsurvivable' Hurricane Helene flood
Dylan Murray
Featured Image Credit: Fox News / 10TV
As Hurricane Helene rages on, stories from those affected by the disastrous storm continue to be revealed.
The category four hurricane hit the western coast of Florida last night and has continued to cause damage to several states in the southeastern region of the United States.
While a lot of national coverage has been focused on Florida, which experienced the brunt of the initial impact that Hurricane Helene had to offer, states like Georgia and South Carolina have also suffered from mass flooding and storm surges rampaging through their streets.
These floods have massively affected the city of Atlanta, Georgia, including during a Fox weather broadcast that featured Bob Van Dillen on the scene of the massive storm.
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During the broadcast in Northern Atlanta, Van Dillen heard a screaming woman trapped in her car as the city continued to flood.
While he at first called the police to save the woman from the surmounting flood, he soon realized that they likely wouldn’t arrive in time and took matters into his own hands.
Stopping in the middle of his reporting, Van Dillen traversing the flood-filled streets and arriving to help. After some minor difficulties, the meteorologist was able to rescue the woman from out of her car and carry her away to safety.
Because of the nature of the storm and flood, the woman could have been stuck in her vehicle for a dangerous amount of time had Van Dillen not made the rescue.
It wound up taking about 15 minutes for the fire department to arrive due to the high volume of calls they receive during a natural disaster.
When he was later asked about helping the woman by Ainsley Earhardt, he responded modestly about what some would call a heroic feat.
“She was panicking. She really wasn’t making too much sense, and she was still strapped into her car seat,” Van Dillen recalled.
“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.”
This action meant that Van Dillen had to traverse into deep flood water, but he says he 'didn’t realize' just how dangerous his actions were during the heat of the moment.
Ultimately, though, he believed that she wouldn’t have been capable of getting to safety on her own.