A woman, who helped rescue a trapped driver from floodwater as a fire crew watched on, has warned how it “happens all the time”.
Danielle Price and her partner Jamie entered a flooded Ford in Essex to help a driving instructor stuck inside the vehicle.
The couple were recording for their YouTube channel when they saw the fire service waiting for a specialist team to arrive and decided to take matters into their own hands.
Danielle told GB News: “We were filming in the area, and we saw the fire brigade come through. I was actually out at five o'clock in the morning with my husband, Jamie and we know it always happens there, and it clicked for us. We saw the fire brigade come through, we followed them and they're just standing around as if nothing's happened.
“Although I do sympathise with the emergency services, they are so tied up in red tape. Surely some sort of common sense has to kick in and just open the door?
“The thing is I'm not entirely sure what the driver was thinking. He's a driving instructor number one and actually, as you come down the roads there are various signs saying water due to flooding and road closed signs. So, I'm not entirely sure what he was thinking of at that time. But again, he's not the first to have done it - I see this all the time.
Danielle added: “He was sitting in the water for about two minutes before anyone got to him. So our main concern is the fire brigade just sitting there, watching him, waiting for these special crews, and they were quite a bit away. So our main thing was getting him out and getting him into an ambulance because all he wanted to do was turn around. He went into the ambulance and went off to the local hospital and that's all we've heard about it.”
Since footage of the incident has gone viral, Essex Fire and Rescue Service has come forward to issue a statement. It said: “Crews who arrived at the incident at Buttsbury Wash found a car stuck in over 1.2m of flood water. Because of the depth, these crews requested additional support from our specialist water team while they remained at the scene to ensure the driver was safe. The driver got out of the car themselves.”
WATCH THE CLIP ABOVE FOR MORE
