00:00It was a pretty surreal moment to drive up on what was a full-blown disaster underway.
00:05I'm Tyler Smith. I'm here in Wailua, Hawaii. I'm sharing a story with the Dodo about the
00:10catastrophic floods that came here in my community. Do you mind if you just start and just like walk
00:16me through on your end like just what happened? I've been raining that night quite a bit. I just
00:21put on the clothes I put on and I ran to my truck and started driving out there.
00:26I drove in through the ranch gates and there was really deep water and basically swam into that
00:31first paddock where the horse I'm responsible for is. So I got up on her and I rode her out
00:35of her
00:36paddock. I had linked up with Levi and his guy Kelsey and hopped on his backhoe. For context how do
00:42you
00:42explain who he is to you? Him and his family do a lot to take care of that ranch. I
00:46asked him if he
00:47needed help. It seemed like he did because there was nobody else around. We had also picked up a
00:51woman Inga out of the water that happened to have just been there. From there, me and Levi hopped in
00:57the water to start and pull four horses out.
01:07The horses, could you sense that they were afraid? Yeah, they were definitely afraid. There was nowhere
01:13else for them to go. It was pretty disorienting, honestly. They didn't act particularly dangerous or
01:19anything considering the severity of the situation. And so I think the horses did handle themselves very
01:24well. It was certainly a lot for them to deal with. So you were kind of like leading them to
01:29where they needed to go? Yeah, leading them, they were haltered. I mean, I was walking through the water
01:34for, I don't know, a quarter mile. You all look so calm in the footage, like you're just doing what
01:41needs to be done. I was concerned for the horses, for sure. It's always good when you're working with
01:45people that know what to do. And there's just no questions asked. And we just do the first thing
01:49that needs to be done. And then you do the next thing. We had a good area to tie all
01:55the horses up
01:55and initially till we found a place for them to stay. And by then I had gotten a text that
02:01my little
02:02horse training facility was also flooding. And so I really felt like I had to go. So Levi and Kelsey,
02:07they continued on after rescuing those horses, started to pull people and cars out of the water that
02:12had been stuck. I've never seen anything like it. There's definitely fear for loss of life with
02:20this type of blood and due to everyone's actions, everyone was okay.
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