Survivor Tells Of Amazing Storm Rescue
Published: January 5, 2006
A San Anselmo woman is telling the story of how she was rescued after a terrifying experience in the weekend storm.
he was trapped in her car when the road turned into a river of floodwaters.
It was perhaps one of the more dramatic scenes from last weekend’s flood — a woman trapped in her car as the water continued to rise.
It happened on Sycamore Avenue in San Anselmo during the early morning hours of New Year’s Eve.
Grace Bruening: “I was trying to go right, away from the creek, but the car just turned left.”
Grace Bruening was the woman in the car. She was trying to leave her apartment before floodwaters got too high. She never thought she would float away.
Grace Bruening, rescued from flood: “I could not get out. I tried the windows, in addition to everything else, and water just poured in, and so I closed that and so I was sitting with water up to my waist at that point then.”
Despite watching the floodwaters rise, Bruening says she only panicked briefly.
Grace Bruening: “I think I was like, at first I was like, my god, then I thought you got your cell phone.”
She called 911 and soon after, members of the Marin County Urban Search and Rescue team arrived. They say it was clear they had to act quickly.
Pat Norton, Marin County Search & Rescue: “Well she was in the car and the water was up over the front hood and going over the windshield. Any number of things could have happened. The exposure, hypothermia, the vehicle could have washed away. She could have drowned.”
After breaking a window, rescuers finally got Bruening out. But the danger wasn’t over.
With the current so strong, they had to use high-tension lines to guide her back to safety.
Finally, after a few harrowing minutes, Bruening made it to solid ground.
And since then, she’s been busy moving out of her flood damaged apartment so she hasn’t given too much thought about what happened to her.
Grace Bruening: “I say life is strange, that’s life, you never know what’s going to happen to you next.”
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