A pregnant woman rode out Hurricane Helene by floating on a mattress for eight hours in her home in the North Carolina mountains.
Emily Russell said she was at her childhood home in the town of Swannanoa when the storm began dumping heavy rains on the region on Sept. 27, local NBC affiliate WXII reported. The downpour left her surrounded by water.
“It was literally like you were stuck on an island,” she told the station. “I just didn’t know what to do. There was no leaving the house at that point.”
But things got even worse when the rushing waters slammed down her front and back doors at the same time, Russell told NBC affiliate WBIR.
“Do I jump out the window and try to float on something so that I’m not about to die and drown and smell gas? Or do I just sit in the bedroom and wait for help?” Russell said in an interview with the outlet. “Being pregnant, I didn’t want something to hit me, so I just sat waiting for help.”
Russell and her dog waited out the storm for eight hours on a mattress, hoping to be rescued. Her husband, David, was eventually able to reach them and transported them to safety.
“The minute I seen him, I just thought ‘This is my only chance to get out,’” she told WXII. “So me and the dog took off down the front yard, but the currents were so strong that I only made it about 10 feet. I had to yell to them ‘I can’t walk anymore or it’s gonna take me.’”
Swannanoa, a town of about 5,000 people around 10 miles east of Asheville, was one of the communities hit hardest by Helene, which has claimed the lives of at least 200 people.