As heavy storms pounded the Northshore on Saturday, Ladder 13 crews with St. Tammany Fire Protection District No. 1 were caught on video pushing a disabled car carrying elderly passengers through floodwater to safety in Slidell. A short clip shared by the department shows firefighters physically shoving the vehicle out of rising water and escorting the occupants to higher ground. The district said crews also rolled out a high-water truck and reminded residents to stay off the roads unless travel was an absolute emergency.
Firefighters Push Disabled Vehicle To Safety
In the video, shared by St. Tammany Fire Protection District #1, Ladder 13 firefighters wade through standing water to guide a stalled sedan while elderly passengers remain inside. Crews help the occupants to safer ground, then put a high-water truck to work checking nearby streets for other trouble spots. The post notes that firefighters pushed the vehicle through floodwaters to safety and again urged residents to avoid driving unless it was truly necessary. The footage drives home how fast familiar neighborhood roads can turn hazardous when intense downpours settle in.
National Weather Service Had Warnings In Place
At the same time, the National Weather Service's New Orleans/Baton Rouge office had flash-flood warnings posted for parts of St. Tammany Parish as thunderstorms dumped heavy rain across the region, warning of roadway and urban flooding and advising drivers to "turn around, don't drown," according to the National Weather Service New Orleans/Baton Rouge. Local alerts and radar showed several inches of rain in some spots, creating the kind of conditions that strand vehicles and overwhelm drainage systems. Emergency managers and response crews were juggling multiple calls around the Northshore while Ladder 13 zeroed in on immediate rescues.
Why This Matters For The Northshore
Slidell and the rest of St. Tammany Parish have been the focus of long-term flood-risk planning, with federal money secured earlier this year to study major defenses around Lake Pontchartrain and to move a large flood-management project forward. Those efforts are still in the planning stages and will not prevent the kind of short-term street flooding seen during sudden cloudbursts, according to Millions For Flood Defenses. For now, high-water response teams and basic community preparedness remain the front line when storms blow up fast. Officials say residents should expect both nuisance flooding and genuinely dangerous conditions during heavy summer rains until the bigger projects and local mitigation work start to take hold.
Anyone who encounters standing water on a roadway is urged not to drive through it and to call 911 if people are trapped or in immediate danger. Local responders and the National Weather Service both stress that most flood fatalities happen in vehicles and that the safest move is to stay off flooded streets altogether, according to the National Weather Service New Orleans/Baton Rouge.
