Vehicle submerged in ditch – Bradford County Telegraph

By Monday afternoon, Alligator Creek had risen to the level of the Laura Street Bridge.

Bradford County Fire Chief Ben Carter said virtually all of the storm recovery calls were for downed trees or power lines. This tree snapped on Starke’s Pratt Street, across the street from the Bradford County Library.

(Left) a Clay County Fire Rescue Special Operations Team performs a sonar scan of a ditch while (right) a Florida Highway Patrol trooper uses a winch on a patrol cruiser to pull an SUV out of the water.

Sheriff’s deputies warned U.S. 301 southbound motorists of street flooding near Starke’s Chevrolet dealership.

BY DAN HILDEBRAN

One person was taken to a hospital after a driver steered a vehicle into a ditch between a Dollar General parking lot and State Road 21 between Keystone Heights and Melrose.

Bradford County Fire Chief Ben Carter said that when one of his engines arrived at the Winn-Dixie at the corner of State Road 21 and Southeast 31st Street, a few bystanders were already in the water with the vehicle, trying to remove someone from the silver SUV.

“One of our members who was on the special operations team entered the water and was able to swim the patient back to shore,” Carter said.

The fire chief called the bystanders heroes, adding that they called the Monday, August 5, early afternoon crash into 9-1-1 and then took action to save the driver.

“They were able to break the window and get the person partially removed from the vehicle,” Carter said, “and then our person, who’s on the special operations team, was able to jump in and help get him the rest of the way out and swim to shore.”

Carter added that a Clay County special operations unit performed a sonar scan of the ditch between the parking lot and the road to verify that no other patients were in the water.

The fire chief declined to identify the driver’s gender or condition. However, one person on scene said the patient was not breathing when removed from the SUV.

Hurricane Debbie blows down road debris

Carter also could not say whether the incident was related to Hurricane Debbie, which was passing through the area at the time of the incident.

He said that visibility was degraded when he arrived at the Midway Winn-Dixie and Dollar General after the crash.

“It was pretty tough to see where the parking lot ended, and the retention pond started even when I pulled up on the scene,” he said.

He also said the traffic crash was the most serious incident within the county as the storm passed to the west.

“A lot of trees down, wires down,” he said of calls to which his agency responded. “We’ve done quite a significant amount of tree removal in partnership with the public works department. “It’s been a team effort for sure.”