In what could only be described as a twist of fate, a pickup truck became ensnared in rising floodwaters caused by Hurricane Francine, not far from the residence of Miles Crawford. The 39-year-old off-duty emergency room nurse, with his professional training in life-saving, sprang into action the moment he noticed the unfolding crisis in his New Orleans neighborhood on Wednesday night.
Crawford quickly armed himself with a hammer from his house and dashed to the underpass where the truck was immobilized. He waded through swirling, waist-high water to reach the driver, whose life was hanging by a thread as the floodwaters ascended to his head. Time was of the essence.
Commanding the driver to move to the back of the truck’s cab—where the water was comparatively shallower—Crawford wielded his hammer to smash the back window. He then hauled the man out, gripping him firmly just as he began to slip into the treacherous currents.
“It was kind of instinctive,” Crawford shared with The Associated Press. “Didn’t take much to break the window and pull the guy out.”
A mere ten minutes later, the pickup was completely submerged.
Crawford, who works at University Medical Center, extricated himself from the water as soon as the driver was safe. Remarkably, he never got a chance to learn the man’s name. Though Crawford sustained a cut on his hand during the rescue—a TV station captured footage of him with a large bandage—he downplayed the injury, attributing it to his familiarity with trauma.
“It’s just second nature, I guess, being a nurse, you just go in and get it done, right?” he reflected. “I just had to get him out of there.”
