Photographer watches helplessly as driver makes wrong turn in flooded lot: 'You're driving into the creek!'
A driver who tried to escape a flooded parking lot during torrential rains in Texas this week instead found themselves in an even more dire situation when they drove right into a swollen creek, despite urgent pleas from onlookers to turn around.
Photographer describes surreal scene as woman steers car into flooded creek
Ryan Star says we watched in shock as a woman who was trying to get out of a flooded College Station, Texas parking lot instead ended up driving straight into flooded creek.
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — A driver who tried to escape a flooded parking lot during torrential rains in Texas this week instead found themselves in an even more dire situation when they drove right into a swollen creek, despite urgent pleas from onlookers to turn around.
"You’re driving into the creek!" you can hear Ryan Star yell out as he filmed the ordeal from the 5th floor of a nearby building on Thursday. "No no no! Stop Stop! No No!"
"OK, that got bad very quickly," he then told himself as the car went straight into deeper waters and began to be carried downstream.
A driver had to be rescued after her car went into a flooded creek alongside a parking lot in College Station, Texas on May 2, 2024.
(Ryan Star / @onairryan on X / FOX Weather)
Over 5 inches of rain fell around College Station on Sunday with another 2.5 inches on Thursday, and Star says it's not uncommon for that creek to swell.
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"Most of the time it does not come out of the banks unless it rains a lot like it had been," he told FOX Weather. "So a lot of people like to look out (from the building)."
He said there had been a couple of vehicles that had made it over concrete bridges on both ends of the creek, but they were vehicles with a higher clearance, like a pickup truck and an SUV.
A car sits damaged a day after it drove into a flooded creek in College Station, Texas.
(Ryan Star / @onairryan on X / FOX Weather)
"So she pulled up in this sedan… When we saw that we were like, well, she probably doesn’t have a good chance of making it through this," Star said. "I’m hoping she’s going to back up and leave and realize that it’s not a good idea. But she did not do that — she went straight into (the creek)— did not know there was a creek there, obviously, and by the time she found out, it was too late."
It only takes about 2 feet of water to sweep a car away, and Star said the current of the creek carried her car down to one of the concrete bridges.
"Her car ran into that and thankfully there was a rail that was right next to her window," Star said. "So she was able to climb out the window and climb up to that rail where people were able to walk up to her and escort her safely from the water."
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She didn’t appear to be injured, Star said.
What a parking lot looks like while not flooded in College Station, Texas. A driver had driven into the swollen creek there, becoming stranded on May 2, 2024.
(Ryan Star / @onairryan on X)
Star said he’s lived in College Station for about a year and this was the worst storm he’s seen there. And after witnessing Thursday’s ordeal, he said the phrase "Turn Around, Don’t Drown" hits different now.
"I mean, we’ve all heard the phrase," he said. "But when you actually see something like this happen to somebody, I think it puts it in a whole new perspective."