Florida man springs to action to help rescue elderly neighbors as rising floodwaters swamp homes

Heavy downpours on Monday led to unprecedented flash flooding in Eastern Florida, and in one neighborhood a neighbor jumped into action to save people in distress in their homes. Rick Addante said multiple of his neighbors in Turtle Creek, a part of Palm Bay, Florida, were elderly, sick or not very mobile, and unable to evacuate as waters kept rising. “Nobody expected this to happen,” Addante said.“All of a sudden, everything just started rising so quickly, and the streets started filling up.” He said every time they expected the water to be at its highest, it got even higher. “It became really clear how serious it was going to become,” Addante said. Addante said he has two neighbors who they were particularly concerned about: one, an 80-year-old man named Terry who lives alone with his dog and recently had open-heart surgery, and another with progressive Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) who was unable to evacuate with his family because he was in a motorized wheelchair. “Both of them were in kind of dire straits,” he said, describing how he kept going through the flooding between the houses to keep track of how the neighbors were doing.Addante said he and other neighbors banded together to make sure they were both doing OK as they waited for help evacuating. He said at this point, water was pouring into swimming pools and backyard from the seawall behind houses, and things became even more urgent. Addante said he got Terry and his dog ready to go, as water reached up to their knees within the house. After a little while of moving back and forth between Terry’s, the other neighbors’ and his own home, they began hearing loud roars from airboats as they neared their neighborhood. Addante, Terry, Terry’s dog Bella and their belongings waited until the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission airboats got to them, and then they got moving on evacuating him. Video shared by Addante shows him helping carry out Terry and the do...