Rescue crews jump into action as floodwaters surge in New Jersey

When feet of water surged into motel rooms in Egg Harbor Township on Oct. 13, miles from the coastline, first responders knew exactly what to do.

Transcript

00:00The police chief telling us this is one of those trouble spots and this is a situation that happens

00:04when they deal with storms like this. You can see we're several hours past high tide now and we still

00:09have some residential streets in the Atlantic City area completely underwater. Most cars cannot make

00:14it down here and as we've been warning people for days now the force of this water, the high tide

00:21unfortunately the timing with this and that persistent northeast flow just pushed so much

00:26water into the bays and inlets and right here it spilled over this road earlier today starting

00:33to recede now. You can see some people walking down the road but we had a lot of water spill

00:38right into this motel parking lot earlier this afternoon and check out the new video that's

00:44just into AccuWeather. It shows the moment that rescue crews were able to save Princess the

00:49pup from one of those flooded motel rooms. Egg Harbor Township Police Chief Fred Spanio says

00:55this all started with a call for help from a man who came back to the motel and he could

01:00not get inside to get his dog out of that flooded room. Rescue crews ended up helping Princess and

01:07they found five other people in that motel helping them all get to safety. The coastal flooding

01:13here sent two to three feet of water spilling into the some of the first floor rooms of that

01:19motel. Chief Spanio says every call for help in a flood has different dangers and that's

01:25why water rescue crews go through so much training. If there's an electrical issue when we get into the

01:32water or if there's a you know a loose manhole and then we take you know someone takes a fall

01:37then we we we uh put ourselves at risk or so they're trained in the water rescue they have the

01:43equipment uh and training and at all to to do those things and that's why we brought them out and

01:49fortunately it worked out because there were other people that needed to be rescued.

01:54You can see the other challenge here drivers going around barricades and even police cars with their

01:58lights on trying to get down flooded roads. Thankfully the driver of that car stopped in time

02:05and was able to turn around and get out before getting too deep. At this hour we could see the water

02:10is receding here this road probably will be open back up soon but still a lot of water in that motel

02:16parking lot and that's what officials are warning people. Please be careful throughout the afternoon

02:21the evening we're not out of the woods yet uh and some of these roads like you could see this one right

02:25here with that coastal flooding we're still talking about feet of water covering some of these roads

02:31and sidewalks. So again officials just urging people in this part of the Jersey Shore play it safe

02:36be careful especially if you're trying to drive after dark because seeing some of these

02:40flooded roads and down power lines can be incredibly difficult to see.

02:45Bill a quick question for you before I let you go how far from the coast are you at your exact location?

02:53Yeah we're this is a bay so this is what officials have been telling people we are not right on the

02:58coast for folks who are familiar with this part of the Jersey Shore you've got Atlantic City you've

03:02got the bays and the inlets and it was just the force of the water being pushed up there so this is the

03:07exact type of storm um that that we were concerned about sometimes it's the big beach issues right at

03:13the coastline but this was the type of the storm with the force of the coastal flooding just pushing

03:17all that water in so impacts being felt miles and miles in from the actual shoreline.

03:24Bill Waddell thanks for your reporting and of course that additional context where people

03:27weren't familiar with the area.