Asklemmy

TL;DR Drink driving rescuing people from floodwaters

It's late at night, my area was flooding, and I was on my deck with the neighbour sinking beers, waiting to have to evacuate and head uphil to his place.

Then we see a stock 4×4 down the road hit the floodwaters all wrong, lights shut, car's dead in the water. I realised I am quite intoxicated but am the only way these people can get out safely. So I grab my keys, get in low range, and carefully drive down there. We realise they can't wind windows down anymore and there's too much weight of water to open the doors, all the while water was rising about 30cm an hour.

So we drove in—something my rig is made for and has done many river and water crossings. We park up, but this guys got no idea where his hook was to attach recovery gear, so it was time to go swimming and search under their car. Found it, got a shackle and strap in, climbed back in through my window and off we go. Somehow my drunk ass is remembering they'll have no power steering, and I need to take big turns to not get them driven into other objects. Manage to pull them up the hill, chock the wheels because the e-brake was failing, and done. They were very grateful, amazed I had all this recovery gear on me, but I was kind of staggering and definitely slurring, feeling like a wreckless POS for driving so drunk. But in the end, our experience meant we performed a clinical rescue. I was personally fucking impressed.

Then down the hill another cars drives in and stuck. Little hatchback this time and it's floating... Here we go again.