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Dad who can't swim rescues his toddler when their car is engulfed by flood waters

Nearby homeowners took the pair in to help them.

Photo credit: Canva

Dad who can't swim saves toddler from car during flood

Flooding can be extremely dangerous, especially flash flooding that seems to come out of nowhere during a torrential downpour. That type of flooding can be deceiving because it can take over roads so quickly that you don't realize it's flooded as badly as it is. Navigating flooding roads with your young child in the backseat is a recipe for a panic attack if things go wrong.

During a particularly nasty downpour, a new dad found himself in a stressful situation with his 11-month-old toddler while attempting to make their way home. Andre Randles lives in England with his partner Paige Newsome and their child Luca. The town had been getting snow and pretty significant rain which led to Randles being sent on another route due to road closures.

But the road closures sent him on a course that resulted in driving straight into a flooded area with no way to turn around. The water covered road he and his baby were on had an unexpected and sudden dip in it which resulted in the vehicle sinking quickly. Randles didn't have time to think, just act and it's a good thing, too. The father of one doesn't know how to swim and the realization that he and his child could drown if swimming were required may have caused him to freeze with fear.


"As soon as I saw danger, saw the water coming into the car and we were no longer floating and starting to sink, something switched in me. I thought I needed to get out and get Luca out," Randles tells the BBC.

That's exactly what he did. Randles rolled down the car windows climbing out before pulling his baby out through the back window in water that came to the man's chest. It was mere seconds before the entire car was almost completely submerged in the flood waters.

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Randles recalls to SkyNews, "I saw the water rising and it just clicked in my head I need to get me and my baby out of here safe so I wound down the window, climbed out wound down his window pulled him out and the water was about chest high. So I carried him above my head to make sure he hasn't touched any of the water or anything to try to keep him dry and warm."

The deep flood waters took Randles by surprise as he shares with SkyNews that he didn't feel like it was raining heavily at the time and had driven in much heavier rain. Pictures of the vehicle began to spread on social media which prompted Newsome to comment on one of them identifying the family's vehicle.

fathers day cute baby GIFGiphy

"This is our car, such a scary experience for my partner having to pull our 11 month old baby whilst the water was flooding into the car," the young mom reveals. "Calderdale Council need to sort this out ASAP! They have been getting notified about this part of Woodhouse Road multiple times by the owners of the house next to wear our car is parked."

The entire ordeal terrified the young family, "just imagine if my partner didn’t think fast enough to get the windows open to climb out and then get my son out. I dread to think," Newsome shares in another comment about her car.


The area where this happened is prone to flooding according to residents interviewed by news stations local to them, and residents who comment on the Calderdale Council Facebook page. They've been asking for something to do be done to address the excessive flooding but so far they haven't had much luck. Thankfully for Randles, he was able to escape the flooding and seek temporary refuge with a nearby resident who allowed them to get dry while waiting for rescue vehicles to reach them.

"To think that I could've actually lost them both makes me a bit emotional, yeah it's really scary. It's just a horrible thing to think about isn't it," Newsome reflects to the outlet.

Horrible indeed, hopefully the family never has to experience such a close call like this again and baby Luca will remain none the wiser.

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These photos of North Carolina's '100-year flood' will stop you in your tracks.

Parts of North Carolina are underwater, thanks to Hurricane Matthew.

Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Over the weekend, Hurricane Matthew passed the coast of North Carolina. The storm has killed at least 1,000 people in Haiti and 22 in the United States. While hurricanes can be extremely damaging to the communities they hit, even farther away their effects are felt.

In North Carolina, Hurricane Matthew dumped as much as 18 inches of rain into rivers and streams already waterlogged from heavy September rainfall. The storm has since dissipated, but communities will be dealing with its effects for a long time.

Getty Images photographer Sean Rayford visited one community that was affected by the storm, and this is what he saw:

The town is Lumberton, North Carolina.

Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Lumberton is a small city of about 22,000 people in southern North Carolina. It's about 80 miles from the ocean.

The rivers in Lumberton are overflowing their banks.

Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Some of North Carolina's rivers are expected to reach record levels. The local Lumber River reached four feet above its previous record, and it's not expected to go down soon.

Water has flooded roads, homes, and parks.

Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

A lot of people have lost their properties altogether.

Those are cars. Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Many major roads have been closed off as well.

Interstate 95. Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Even the Interstate was closed down. Obama declared a state of emergency for the affected areas.

Meanwhile, residents have had to make do, like these folks boating over a front yard.

Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Lumberton has also lost power and running water.

Residents ride an ATV past emergency workers. Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Lumberton isn't alone. The Guardian reported that nearly 1 million people were without power in North and South Carolina.

Boats and helicopters have been able to save a lot of people.

Rescue workers outside a house in Lumberton. Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Rescue workers saved about 1,500 people throughout North Carolina by early Monday.

These rescue workers, for instance, helped get a resident and his pet to dry land.

Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Some people have compared it to Hurricane Floyd, which hit in 1999 and resulted in a "100-year flood."

Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

The Guardian quoted Blake Griswold, who was watching a creek spill over its banks, as saying: "That was a 100-year flood. It's been 16 years, and we have another one."

This is important. 100-year storms might become more common in the future.

This flooded bridge has restricted traffic. Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Climate change may cause storms like Matthew to become stronger and more frequent, and to come with riskier storm surges. Instead of seeing a flood or storm like this once every hundred years, we might start seeing them every 15 to 20 years instead.

This flood begs a bigger question: Are we ready for more storms like this?

North Carolina's record flooding suggests we aren't.

We've all heard about climate change by now, so it's not like we don't know about it. But people often don't take action because we don't see how it'll benefit us; or we think that one person can't do very much; or we don't want to give up our lifestyles.

But honestly, there are a few super-easy things we can do. Most important, we can remember North Carolina this November and vote for congressional and presidential candidates who support carbon control or who will invest in infrastructure like dams and levees.

And the benefits? Well, for one, maybe we can push 100-year storms back closer to what they used to be.

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How young Republicans and Democrats are coming together to help Louisiana flood victims.

'After all, Southern hospitality knows no political affiliation.'

Between the presidential election and a recent streak of natural disasters, both political and environmental climates have been rather nasty so far in 2016.

It's almost as though the environment has been responding to all the political dissonance, from relentless raging fires in California to historic flooding in West Virginia, Maryland, and now southern Louisiana.

Leslie Andermann Gallagher surveys the flood damage to her home. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Louisianans are not recovering alone, though — they have help, thanks to a rather unlikely bipartisan effort.

The Texas Young Republicans and Young Democrats have set differing political views aside to unite and help their neighboring state of Louisiana.‌‌

The plan is a simple: they've set up an Amazon wish list for those displaced by the flooding. Anyone wanting to help can choose items from the list and send them to this address at checkout:

Scott’s Drum Center, C/O Flood Relief 4956 Johnston St, Lafayette, LA 70503.

Once the Louisiana teams on the ground receive the supplies, they distribute them to the families in need.

The Arkansas Young Republicans started the effort. When the Texas Young Republicans decided to lend a hand, the Texas Young Democrats reached out to president of the TYRs, John Baucum, to see if they could be of service.

‌Photo by Brian Smialowski/Getty Images.‌

According to TYD Communications Director Chelsea Roe, both groups have been working together in perfect bipartisan harmony since day one of the collaboration.

Roe believes being a younger generation is one reason why their cooperative efforts are working so well.

"We understand that a diversification of ideas is what makes us better as a human race," she said over email. "At the end of it all, that's what we have in common — we want to leave this world we live in a better place than it was when we came into it."

‌Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images. ‌

Baucum expressed similar sentiments to the Dallas Morning News: "At the end of the day, we all live and work together."

Our country might be divided when it comes to political beliefs, but in the face of a crisis, it's wonderful to see people putting those differences aside for the greater good.

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A hero photographer is helping flood victims save their priceless family photos.

The water never reached Kimberly Viator's doorstep because her house sits up on a hill.

But all around her, her Youngsville, Louisiana, neighbors' homes were taking on massive amounts of water.

And all over the state, things are just as bad: Over 40,000 homes are said to have been destroyed or damaged in this year's Louisiana flooding.

An intersection is completely engulfed by floodwater. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

"We were so blessed," Kimberly said.

When Kimberly heard of people throwing away their treasured family photos because of water damage, though, she felt her heart break.

Kimberly says a family member was helping out at a neighbor's house, and they started throwing albums and albums of sopping wet photos into the garbage, assuming they were ruined.

"I said, 'No, don't do that, oh my gosh. We can try to salvage them.'"

Kimberly knew she could put her years of photography experience to use. So she posted on her professional Facebook page with a simple message, offering to do anything she could to help save photos for those in need:

For anyone in the flood area here in south Louisiana please do not throw out your wet or damaged photos. I am not just...

Posted by Kimberly Ann Photography on Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Almost immediately, thousands of cries for help filled Kimberly's inbox.

Her first challenge? Carefully thawing and drying a frozen wedding album for a nearby couple.

Removing wet photos from an album like this is tricky work, and it needs to be done fast. Photo by Kimberly Ann Photography, used with permission.

Freezing photos can help keep the images intact while you move them to a place where they can dry out properly, she says. This first batch dried perfectly with no damage, but Kimberly also fixes smearing, smudging, tears, and other kinds of damage by creating high-resolution scans of the photos, manipulating them in Photoshop, and reprinting them on photo paper.

Then there was a woman whose 10-year-old son had passed away just days before the flooding.

"Anything she had of his was still very fresh and so precious," Kimberly said. "And it was all gone."

Except for a handful of photos.

"It's something that, in the scheme ofthings, seems very meaningless compared to someone losing theirhome. But I've had people tell me, 'My home can be rebuilt, but Ican't have another photo taken with my grandfather who passed away. I can't bring back my child who passed away and this was theirlast picture,'" Kimberly said.

"It's almostlike it's the last thing they have."

The sheer number of desperate requests has been far too much for Kimberly to handle alone.

So it's a good thing people all over the world have offered to help.

Every surface in Kimberly's house is covered in photographs. Photo by Kimberly Ann Photography, used with permission.

Placing individual photos around her house, drying them, scanning them into the computer, then editing and reprinting them is massively time-consuming.

But her inspiring work has traveled far and wide. And others want to help.

"I've had an astronomical amount of people from as far as Australia offer to do Photoshop work for me. These are legitimate professionals. ... In every state in the U.S. someone has offered to help."

But that's just the digital work. When it comes to collecting and drying the photos, Kimberly is on her own, for now. She says she's running out of space in her house and is hoping to find free access to a warehouse nearby to continue her work.

The houses and automobiles of Louisiana will eventually be repaired or rebuilt.

But memories aren't so easy to replace. Playing on the floor of their parents home as a kid or being a wide-eyed teen pulling off in their first car — that's what Kimberly is fighting to save.

"There's no one else here to help," she said. "It's neighbor helping neighbor."

With neighbors like her working tirelessly to make a difference, it's hard not to feel hopeful that, one day, things will be OK in Louisiana again.

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