Florida man rescues neighbors on surfboard after Helene floods island city

A man living in a Florida island city that was inundated with Hurricane Helene’s deadly storm surge reportedly used his surfboard to rescue about a dozen of his neighbors – as well as pets – from flooded homes.

As told by WTVT, Marty Thomas’s heroics on Indian Rocks Beach provided one of a precious few uplifting stories to come in the wake of Helene, which has killed at least 200 people across six south-eastern US states Thursday as search crews continued combing through the storm’s wreckage.

Thomas leapt into action as Helene, then a category 4 storm, crashed ashore on 26 September with an intensity that pushed several feet of storm surge into his community. He had heard his neighbor Anne McIntosh begin screaming from two blocks away after her home filled with a dangerous amount of water, which had driven her brother and sister-in-law to seek refuge on counters as the beds and couch floated.

WTVT reported that Thomas threw his surfboard out of his window, mounted it and started paddling toward McIntosh. She soon heard a voice call out, “We’ll get you. We’ll get you. We’ll get you,” and realized it was Thomas.

He managed to pry McIntosh’s door open and paddle her, her brother and his wife to safety.

In an interview with WTVT, Thomas said the water had reached McIntosh’s chest by the time he arrived and found her desperately holding items above her head. He joked, “Anne is tough – she didn’t even need my help,” but McIntosh assured: “He saved us … just as an angel walking.”

Thomas didn’t stop there. With a flashlight-wielding friend on a second-floor balcony illuminating his way, Thomas spent the ensuing hours paddling toward any screams for help he could detect and rescued several more neighbors.

Among them was a heavy St Bernard that couldn’t be lifted by his owner. WTVT recounted how Thomas grabbed the dog and threw it out the window – and the creature instinctively climbed the surfboard so his impromptu rescuer could paddle him away.

The peril confronting Thomas, McIntosh and others who endured Helene on Indian Rocks Beach was significant: as of Thursday, at least 12 deaths related to Helene – including 10 drownings – had been reported in Florida’s Pinellas county, which includes Indian Rocks Beach.

Three of those deaths were on Indian Rocks Beach, which has a population of about 3,670.

Video of Thomas showed him uncomfortably shrugging off McIntosh as she declared him “the hero of Indian Rocks Beach” on WTVT.

“I appreciate that – you’re pretty awesome yourself,” Thomas told his neighbor.

But she wouldn’t let him squirm out of the praise.

“Thank you – and I love you for it, and you deserve all the good things in life,” she said.