Tom Keane was driving his Jeep through today’s sudden downpour when he encountered what appeared to be a passable puddle on Bray Avenue.
But when the 61-year-old Mattituck man attempted to drive around the flooded area of the road, his vehicle was suddenly swept into the rising waters of the adjacent sump.
“I just got pulled in,” Keane said in an interview today. “I put it in four wheel drive and nothing happened. I had no control.”
Within moments, his car was pulled nearly roof-deep into the flood. Water began pouring into the vehicle, rising above his feet. Thinking quickly, Keane rolled down his car windows so that he would not be trapped under water.
“You see this stuff on TV, so you know you have to get the windows down,” Keane said.
He began struggling to climb out of the Jeep window as the water continued to fill his car. In a fortunate twist of fate, that is exactly the moment that Southold Highway Superintendent Vincent Orlando happened across the scene.
Orlando was out checking on road conditions and the town’s overwhelmed storm drains when he noticed a light-colored SUV, half-submerged in water.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Orlando said. When he pulled his truck over for a closer look, he saw the driver’s side window coming down and a person trying to get out.
Orlando said he jumped out of his truck and ran into the recharge basin, “sloshing through knee-deep water.”
“I thought, ‘Holy cow — this is like something you see on TV,’ as I made my way toward the SUV. It was raining cats and dogs,” Orlando said.
He helped the man out of the submerged vehicle and brought him to his house down the road.
“I’m just glad some angel sent me there right at that moment,” Orlando said.
Keane said that Orlando attempted to call the police, but that “he couldn’t get through because they were swamped – pardon the pun.”
“They have these little tools that will break the window if you go under water, and I’ve always thought about getting one,” Keane said, reflecting on the experience. “I think I’ll get one now.”
With reporting by Katharine Schroeder and Denise Civiletti
