{"id":241624,"date":"2026-05-23T12:20:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/241624\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T12:20:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T12:20:46","slug":"woman-pulled-from-flooded-car-on-queens-parkway-reunited-with-firefighter-savior-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/241624\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman pulled from flooded car on Queens parkway reunited with firefighter savior"},"content":{"rendered":"

A hero firefighter was reunited Friday with a desperate driver he saved days earlier when floodwaters<\/a> filled her car on a crowded Queens parkway.<\/p>\n

Off-duty Firefighter Travis Langan was driving home Wednesday when he came across several cars stuck in rising water along the Jackie Robinson Parkway<\/a>. He noticed that one driver was trapped in a car where the water was so high that the vehicle was almost completely submerged.<\/p>\n

The quick-thinking Langan waded into the chest-high water, climbed atop the car, smashed out the skylight and pulled the woman to safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so happy and so blessed that I was sent an angel,\u201d said Brooklyn school principal Carmen Pinto. \u201cI was about to drown in a trapped vehicle, and without thinking of his own well-being, he punched a hole in my roof and rescued me. And today I get to see the Knicks. Yes, I get, I get to go back to my school community in Bed-Stuy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pinto said she was driving home on the narrow, winding parkway when she saw a huge puddle that seemed to keep growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin seconds the water rose,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then six vehicles, mine included, started floating, and that\u2019s when panic really set in.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she sat helplessly, her electricity powered Tesla shut down. She couldn\u2019t operate the doors or the windows, and she said her calls to 911 were not going through. By the time she did reach an emergency dispatcher, she said the water was at her chest.<\/p>\n

She said she was banging on the sunroof with a metal water bottle. Then, suddenly Langan appeared out of nowhere, like an Avenger from a superhero film.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen he just started pounding, you know, bare fist, and I was like, \u2018Oh, my God, he\u2019s going to hurt his hands,\u2019\u201d Pinto said. \u201cI really think that I was seconds from drowning, if it wasn\u2019t for Travis pulling me out of that situation. I thought I was going to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Langan said he was on the phone with his father, while exiting onto the Grand Central Parkway when he spotted the submerged cars.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw people getting out on the roofs, and I said, \u2018Dad, I got to give you a call back,\u2019\u201d Langan said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hopped on her roof, and I saw her face pressed up against the sunroof, and I just started punching, punching my way through.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the hole was big enough, Pinto passed him the metal water bottle, and he banged away some more until he was able to get a grip and tear away the glass.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018Calm down, ma\u2019am, I\u2019m here. It\u2019s OK.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

And it was.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t want her to drown,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Pinto, the principal of Brooklyn\u2019s PS 81, the Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School<\/a>, was reunited with her superhero at FDNY Headquarters in Brooklyn, where she couldn\u2019t stop singing his praises. She said Langan\u2019s pregnant wife and daughters have a lot to be proud of.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud that Spider-Man is from Queens,\u201d she said. \u201cBut now he\u2019s got competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Langan also received high praise from Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore and Mayor Mamdani.<\/p>\n

Mamdani said the storm that hit New York City that day dumped 2 inches of rain in less than an hour.<\/p>\n

He said \u201coff-duty\u201d didn\u2019t mean a thing to Langan.<\/p>\n

\u201cTravis didn\u2019t hesitate,\u201d Mamdani said. \u201cCarmen is with us today, safe and dry in her favorite Jalen Brunson T-shirt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Langan, a firefighter with Ladder 123 in Crown Heights, walked away with a bloodied hand. The firefighter, who was wearing Crocs that day, said he wished he had been a little more prepared. He didn\u2019t even have the clogs\u2019 straps flipped back around his heel in so-called \u201csport mode,\u201d but instead forward in \u201crelaxed mode.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI forgot to do laundry at the firehouse that day, and I didn\u2019t have socks,\u201d Langan said. \u201cI didn\u2019t even put them in sport mode, you know what I mean?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hero firefighter was reunited Friday with a desperate driver he saved days earlier when floodwaters filled her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[94147,7438,37963,4777,10663,9,24,63,122,124,123,94148],"class_list":["post-241624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-carmen-pinto","tag-firefighter","tag-jackie-robinson-parkway","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-knicks","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-travis-langan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}