Pierce Tewksbury home from college for the summer was at first having fun narrating his video of the flash flood happening before his eyes. (7News)
SILVER SPRING, Md. (7News) — Pierce Tewksbury home from college for the summer was at first having fun narrating his video of the flash flood happening before his eyes.
Watching cars drive into the water, he made comments like, “Look at this guy!” Then he realized the water on East-West Highway was still coming up.
“It was within minutes,” he said.
Stuck at the red light on Sundale Dr., he watched as it got deeper and deeper in just one light cycle, saying, “And another two minutes go by, it becomes almost undrivable.”
What happened next was caught on camera and became a viral video. Tewksbury carried a terrified woman to safety as her car floated in the brown waters.
“You know, the water could be coming into the car, there could be electric current in the car, it's just a dangerous situation,” he recalls, “So I grab her, pick her up, walk her over to dry land, and I didn't think twice about it.”
Montgomery County Assistant Chief Administrative Officer Earl Stoddard says the county’s system of flood sensors, 7News reported on earlier this month, performed well, but as a graph of data from one of them showed, it rose so fast that first responders couldn’t get to some intersections and roads like Sligo Creek Parkway closed fast enough to save some drivers.
“This is unprecedented in terms of the rapid rise of water in the area,” says Stoddard, “And so, it just goes to show you that you can get micro level or localized level of flooding given with these extreme outbursts of rainfall that could happen anywhere but you know, you don't know exactly where that bull's eye is going to line up on the county.”
Stoddard says soon the county will be rolling out a website that will actually allow residents to plug in addresses to see in advance the risk of flash floods. He expects the problem to only become worse in the years ahead.
As for Tewksbury’s rescue of the woman from that floating car, he says, “It's just a scary, horrible situation that I don't wish upon anybody.”