A group of Good Samaritans were caught on camera rescuing an elderly man who was stranded in his flooded car as residents throughout Florida step up to save their neighbors from the feet-deep floodwaters.
The video, posted online, shows two men grabbing their elderly neighbor from his submerged car in Bonita Springs and carrying him through waist-deep waters.
A third man could be seen carrying what appears to be another person, in an attempt to bring them to safety.
‘We saw an elderly man struggling in his car and we knew he needed help,’ a man identified as Benny from the Collier County Cowboys Instagram page said.
‘The guys all maintained to grab the door and pry it open. He was a bit in shock so he didn’t want to let go so we assured him we were there to help him. The guys carefully picked him up out of the car, and brought him to shore, away from the current.’
Meanwhile, in Naples, a firefighter was filmed trying to break the glass of a submerged white sedan.
He eventually reaches inside, apparently able to unbuckle the female driver, as he asks his colleagues for a life vest to provide the woman as they lead her through the water.
BONITA SPRINGS: A group of Good Samaritans were filmed pulling an elderly man out of a submerged car on Thursday
BONITA SPRINGS: Two of the men carried their elderly neighbor through the waist-deep waters to safety
BONITA SPRINGS: The Collier County Cowboys wrote on Instagram that they were able to get the man away from the current
NAPLES: A Naples fire fighter was seen trying to break the glass of a submerged white sedan in an attempt to rescue a woman stuck inside the car
NAPLES: He was eventually able to open the back driver’s side door and reach across to the driver, apparently unbuckling her
NAPLES: With the help of another firefighter, he was able to get the woman out of the vehicle and to safety
Another video posted online showed a man in shorts and a red t-shirt approaching a cat huddled above an air conditioner as a woman off-screen cries, ‘Look at the kitty, poor kitty.’
The man slowly approaches the cat, and scoops it up as water continues to rush by.
Photos posted by the Orange County Fire Rescue also show crews carrying and ferrying residents to safety as they brought boats out onto the flooded streets.
And in Naples, the fire rescue live streamed a water rescue with firefighters carrying a woman by her arms and into the station, while in Fort Meyers, Coast Guard teams are in the process of rescuing residents stranded on rooftops.
‘We didn’t even wait for the passage of the storm last night, we had helicopters in the air,’ Rear Admiral Brendan McPherson told CNN, adding: ‘We rescued 13 people along the coast between Fort Meyers and St Petersburg.
‘We currently have an aircraft in the air with the Florida National Guard, actively pulling people off of roofs in Fort Meyers.’
RIO PINAR: The Orange County Fire Rescue continued their efforts on Thursday morning, carrying residents to safety
RIO PINAR: Rescue crews could be seen in Rio Pinar ferrying a family away from their flooded home
RIO PINAR: The Orange County Fire Rescue was out in Rio Pinar, taking boats out on the flooded waters
RIO PINAR: The crews helped families get out of the deep waters and onto more shallow ground
Residents now say they were not prepared for the devastation brought by the Category 4 storm, that left hundreds dead in its wake.
‘We weren’t prepared for quite a storm of this magnitude,’ Joe Orlandini, of Fort Meyers Beach, told Good Morning America. ‘We were hoping it would dodge us. It didn’t. It got worse.’
His wife, Shannon, posted a video on Facebook showing the debris from a house just across the street caught up in the flood waters.
‘There’s a bed, I could see a door,’ Orlandini said.
Authorities say they fear the fatalities will be ‘in the hundreds’ as the hurricane continues to barrel its way across the state, leaving a ‘life changing’ trail of complete destruction in its wake.
Scores of people remain trapped on the roofs of their flooded homes as 2.5million are without power, with officials warning evacuees not to return home after the Sunshine State was battered by 150mph winds and 18ft storm surges.
As of 10am EST, more than 2.6 million residents throughout the state remained without power.
Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno, whose area covers Fort Myers, which has been one of the worst affected by the monster storm, confirmed that he was expecting hundreds of fatalities in his jurisdiction alone.
He told GMA: ‘While I don’t have confirmed numbers, I definitely know the fatalities are in the hundreds.
‘Thousands of people are waiting to be rescued, I cannot give a true assessment until we are on scene assessing each scene and we can’t access people that is the problem.
‘This will be a life changing event for the men and women who are responding. This is a life-changing event for all of us.’
Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood also predicted the recovery effort for the tsunami-life waves hitting the state will be like ‘something we’ve not seen in this county ever.’
Sanibel Island appears to have been cut off from mainland Florida as shocking photos show the Causeway Bridge collapsed into the Gulf of Mexico, as President Biden declared a ‘major disaster’.
KINGS POINT: Emergency services are battling to keep people safe as the storm is intensifying and likely to cause more than $45billion in damage
FORT MEYERS: People walked through the destruction brought by Hurricane Ian on Thursday
ORLANDO: The wind gusts were so heavy they were able to take down a stoplight pole in downtown Orlando
NAPLES: A McLaren P1, worth around $1.2million, was flooded out of a garage and into the road alongside a Rolls Royce Phantom, destroying the super car as it was washed away in Naples, Florida
Hurricane Ian blasted ashore with catastrophic force on Wednesday afternoon as a Category 4 storm, but has since been downgraded to a tropical storm by the National Hurricane Center in an update early on Thursday.
It is located around 35 miles southwest of Cape Canaveral, with maximum speeds of 65mph, and is moving northeast at around 8 mph.
However it could be nearing hurricane strength again when it approaches the coast of South Carolina on Friday, which is set to be it’s second US landfall.
Experts are expecting the damages to cost up to $260billion, though the clean-up efforts are currently unable to get underway as swathes of Florida remain underwater.