{"id":431658,"date":"2026-10-19T01:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T01:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/431658\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T01:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T01:48:12","slug":"black-hawk-carries-school-bus-over-florida-town-heres-why-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/431658\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Hawk Carries School Bus Over Florida Town: Here\u2019s Why"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Madison<\/p>\n

“I heard the helicopter loud and clear,” said Kelly Vokaty, a resident of Babcock Ranch in the Punta Gorda, Florida, area.<\/p>\n

Vokaty watched from her lanai in Babcock Ranch Friday morning as a Black Hawk helicopter hovered over the water. However, what she didn’t realize was that it was carrying a school bus!<\/p>\n

“Oh, I did see a shadow or something long. It looked like something was being carried, but I couldn’t differentiate what it was,” said Vokaty. <\/p>\n

Residents in the area couldn’t help but do a double-take. <\/p>\n

“Had I seen that live, I would have just, like, totally been freaking out. Did they take it out of the water or, you know, what happened?” said Babcock Ranch resident Richard Berlin-Velez.<\/p>\n

Only sister station WBBH<\/a> (Gulf Coast News) caught this footage on our live weather cameras Friday morning. Our team reached out to the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office for answers. <\/p>\n

The sheriff’s office says its dive team is practicing how to save people in the water. <\/p>\n

“It’s something that you don’t see every day. But when you learn what’s happening, you’re amazed,” said Berlin-Velez.<\/p>\n

CCSO says its dive team visits Babcock Ranch multiple times a year to practice underwater extractions, using setups like a submerged bus and dummies to prepare for real-world emergencies. <\/p>\n

“We’re just lucky to live in a community where we have the backdrop for them to learn what they need to do to save lives,” said Vokaty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“I heard the helicopter loud and clear,” said Kelly Vokaty, a resident of Babcock Ranch in the Punta…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59585,2954,889,169324,167982,169317,853,7215,11648,18477,169321,28,30,33207,29,897,15467,536,4329,53629,169322,36368,169318,660,14484,2171,1999,169323,7281,2631,169320,11273,169319,4103,57346,88176],"class_list":["post-431658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-answer","tag-area","tag-babcock-ranch","tag-babcock-ranch-multiple-time","tag-black-hawk","tag-black-hawk-helicopter","tag-charlotte-county","tag-charlotte-county-sheriff","tag-charlotte-county-sheriffs-office","tag-dive-team","tag-dummies","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-lake","tag-florida-news","tag-fort-myers","tag-friday-morning","tag-gulf-coast","tag-gulf-coast-news","tag-jsnd","tag-kelly-vokaty","tag-lanai","tag-live-weather-cameras","tag-office","tag-punta-gorda","tag-resident","tag-residents","tag-richard-berlin-velez","tag-school-bus","tag-sheriff","tag-submerged-bus","tag-team","tag-underwater-extractions","tag-water","tag-water-rescue","tag-wbbh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}