With the potential for heavy rain on Friday, drivers should be alert for localized flash flooding. When rising water surrounds your vehicle, you must act quickly and calmly to survive. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has estimated 400 Americans fail to escape sinking vehicles every year. American Medical Response offers these tips to stay safe when driving in flood conditions.
- Most important: When the National Weather Service issues a flash flood alert, if you don’t have to drive, stay off the roads.
- If you must drive, stay out of running water. Even just a few inches can float a car or truck. Heed the lifesaving message, “Turn around; don’t drown.”
- Do your best to stay calm but act quickly. Remember: Your vehicle will float briefly but how long depends on the type of vehicle, weight and other factors. Every second is critical.
- Unbuckle your seat belt.
- Do not even try to open the door. Water is putting as much as 2,000 pounds of pressure on the door. Once the car is fully underwater, you will be able to open the doors, but, by then, you should have already escaped.
- Try once to lower a window. If the window doesn’t roll down, break it. If you have a tool made for breaking windows, use it. If not, strike the window hard with an object such as your cell phone, keys or laptop. You can also pull the headrest off a seat and slam the metal legs through the window. Don’t try to break the front or rear windshields, since they’re harder than side windows. Another option: Kneel on the seats facing away from the window, brace yourself and kick the window hard. Water will start rushing into the car. Time is running out.
- If there are children in safety seats in your vehicle, unbuckle the oldest child first and push that child out the window. If the youngest child is an infant or toddler, hold the child to your chest and push yourself and the child through the window and up to the surface.
- When you surface: If you can swim to shore, do it.
- If you can latch onto a tree or other stationary object, do it and keep hanging on.
- After your escape from the vehicle, the current might carry you downstream. Turn on your back and stick your legs out in the direction the current is flowing.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more than half of flood-related drownings occur when a vehicle is driven into floodwater. More information on flood safety is available through the National Weather Service, noaa.gov/floods.
Operating in 20 Mississippi counties, AMR companies are the state’s busiest ambulance services.