Port St. Lucie, FL – Two people were rescued from a sinking van in Port St. Lucie after heavy rainfall caused flooding that swept their vehicle into a canal Monday morning.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred November 2nd, shortly before 10:30 a.m., as severe weather brought significant flooding to portions of St. Lucie County.<\/p>\n
According to the Port St. Lucie Police Department, the driver attempted to turn around after encountering floodwaters but was unable to prevent the van from being carried off the roadway.<\/p>\n
The vehicle entered a nearby canal, trapping both occupants as water began filling the interior.<\/p>\n
Officer Peterson arrived approximately 100 seconds after receiving the emergency call and entered the water to assist the stranded motorists.<\/p>\n
Police body camera footage captured the rescue as Peterson approached the partially submerged vehicle and helped the driver escape.<\/p>\n
The second occupant, identified as Maria Andrade, remained trapped in the rear of the van because she could not release her seat belt.<\/p>\n
Firefighters with the St. Lucie County Fire District joined the rescue effort, with one responder entering the vehicle to help free Andrade.<\/p>\n
Andrade’s son, Raul Morales, later told WPBF 25 News that his mother had been returning from a doctor’s appointment when the incident occurred.<\/p>\n
Both occupants were safely removed from the van and were reportedly doing well following the rescue.<\/p>\n
The incident occurred as emergency crews across Florida’s Treasure Coast responded to flooded roads and stranded motorists.<\/p>\n
Authorities reminded drivers to avoid traveling through flooded streets because submerged roadways can conceal dangerous conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Port St. Lucie, FL – Two people were rescued from a sinking van in Port St. Lucie after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1778,1779,2927,9114,75951,992,8181,171,173,172,5200,174242,14822,732],"class_list":["post-448710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-canal","tag-firefighters","tag-flooding","tag-floodwaters","tag-occupant","tag-people","tag-police-officers","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news","tag-rainfall","tag-raul-morales","tag-van","tag-vehicle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448710","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=448710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}