Dramatic rescue in Harrington, Que. as couple becomes trapped in flooded roadway

In his 41 years as a volunteer firefighter, Neil Swail had never had to perform a water rescue on land. That changed on Friday when torrential rains poured over Southern Quebec.

Swail, the Director of Public Security for the town of Harrington, 115 kilometres northwest of Montreal, said that they received a call about a couple trapped in a vehicle on White Road.  

"They arrived at a place where the road was flooded and proceeded to try to cross the flooded section of the road," Swail explained.

"I guess not realizing that there was at least four feet of water on the road, so the current ended up sweeping the car into the ditch and trapping them in the vehicle."

Before firefighters could reach the couple, the situation went from bad to worse.

"The gentleman was still in the car, but the lady had tried to exit the vehicle and was subsequently taken by the current downstream," Swail recounted. 

"Luckily for her, the water had sort of chosen its own path outside of the creek bed, so she got swept down through the forest beside the creek bed. She was in about four feet of water up to her chest, I believe."

After rescuing the man, the firefighters searched for the woman along the shoreline created by the flooding.

First responders found the woman, in her 40s, about 60 feet downstream from where the car had become stuck.

"She was very much awake. She was screaming very loudly, but we couldn't hear her over the sound of the rushing water," he said.

The woman, according to Swail, managed to grab hold of a tree.

"So thankfully, she was on the upstream side of the tree, holding on for dear life," Swail said.

If not for that tree, Swail said she would have been swept down into the lake, which is another 300 feet away.

"She banged her head somewhere. I guess she got rolled around in the current and ended up having a fairly large-sized egg on her head from hitting her head on a tree or something, debris."

The woman was also suffering from hypothermia and was transported to Saint-Agathe Hospital.

"She was also in a little bit of a state of shock, and from the cold water, her legs were not very functional for the first few minutes when we got her out," Swail said.

The woman was released later that same night.

"We've done water rescues on the Rouge River, but this is the first time... what would normally be a dry roadbed that had just been flooded as a result of the heavy rains," he said.

As luck would have it, Swail said the town of Harrington has spent the summer installing larger culverts under several roads to address these "once-in-a-century rainstorms, which now seem to occur every year."

He added that they are grateful for the culverts, which are double the size of older ones and mostly did their job. He thinks the situation could have been much worse otherwise.

One older and smaller culvert ended up in the Riviere Rouge, which he estimates rose by 12 feet on Friday.  He said it may have ended up downstream somewhere.