A Fox Weather meteorologist broke away from a live “Fox & Friends” report on Friday morning to save a woman who was trapped in her submerged car and screaming for help, eventually wading into the chest-deep water and hauling her to safety.
Bob Van Dillen was doing a live hit from Atlanta around 7 a.m. about the widespread flooding caused by Hurricane Helene, showing a vehicle that got caught in the rising creek bed in the background. That’s when he was interrupted by the woman’s cries for help.
With the live-shot still rolling, Dillen yelled to the woman that 9-1-1 had been called, and fire trucks are heard in the distance. But as the sirens faded and her screams became more frantic, Dillen ended the standup and decided to take action.
Fox cut back to the “Fox & Friends” studio, but the cameraman caught the daring rescue in swift, chest-deep water, and Dillen later was seen carrying her through the deep water to safety. In a post-incident report, “Fox & Friends” anchor Ainsley Earhardt praised the weatherman’s decisive action and called him a hero.
“She was panicking,” Dillen said. “She really wasn’t making too much sense and she was still strapped into her – her car seat. She still had the seat buckle on. And she had her window about this much down and she’s trying to talk to me through that.”
Dillen said the water pressure wouldn’t allow the car door to open, so he told her to roll the window down, which allowed more water to get in but also made it possible to open the door and get the woman out.
“It’s up to my chest and there’s a little bit of a current, but she was a short lady too,” he continued. “So she was probably about five feet. There’s no way she was going to be able to touch [the ground].”
Steve Doocy, who noted that Dillen is a surfer, said the woman “did what you’re supposed to do” by staying in the car, but that the meteorologist “did something you’re not supposed to do. And that is, you know, if there’s six inches of moving water, it can knock you down. If there’s a foot of water, it can sweep away your car.”
Dillen said helping the woman “was hard not to do.”
Like we said before, 9-1=1 is just – they have so many calls. They’re going to take a long time to get here and the fire department finally did get here, but it was about 15 minutes later. So she was panicking. The water was coming up. It was getting cold for her obviously. So it was – it was – it was a situation developing.”
Dillen said it was remarkable that the car, while halfway under water, was still running and the electronics were operating, enabling the woman to get the window down, critical to her rescue.
“It’s like a miracle that the water actually didn’t short circuit all the boards and allowed the window to go down because it went down like it was no problem and it went down right into the water,” he said. “But that allowed the pressure to be equalized and allowed me to pry the door open, unbuckle her seatbelt, put her on me, in my side. It was good to go.”
Watch the daring rescue and post-interview in the video clips above.
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