Restaurant owner rescues woman from submerged car in Leicestershire
Dramatic footage showed a woman being rescued from a submerged car in Leicestershire after a critical incident was declared in the region due to wide-scale flooding.
A restaurant owner in the village of Great Glen went to the aid of a woman who was struggling in her submerged car after severe flooding hit the area on Monday morning.
Cimi Kazazi, who runs the Italian Greyhound gastropub, waded through freezing water to get the woman out of her car and bring her to the pub.
“She said if she stayed there another 15 minutes she would have died, she would have passed out,”
. “The water was completely freezing – worse than Iceland, worse than Siberia. She was very shaky and had her phone in her hand.“I said forget about everything else in the car – don’t worry about anything, let everything go.”
The woman was reportedly trying to leave the village when her car became stuck. Residents said the flooding in the village was the worst they had ever seen.
East Midlands ambulance service declared a critical incident for the first time in its history, with flooding partly responsible for the level of escalation.
The service said “significant patient demand, pressure within local hospitals and flooding across the East Midlands” had led to it putting out “more ambulance resource than ever before” when it triggered the alert at 6pm on Monday.
Leicestershire fire and rescue service said 59 people were rescued from flooding incidents across the county on Monday, including people in stranded vehicles and flooded homes.
A severe flood warning, indicating danger to life, was issued for parts of Leicestershire on Tuesday, as heavy rainfall and melting snow mean river levels are continuing to rise, with areas along the banks of the River Soar particularly at risk.