18-year-old flies drone over flooded sinkhole — and saves a couple’s life in Colorado
An 18-year-old was checking out floodwaters with a drone in Colorado when he just happened to spot someone in need of rescue, according to local reports.
Josh Logue was flying his drone in a remote area of Brighton near where he lives the morning of June 24 when he noticed what he thought looked like a shadow on a lightly traveled gravel road, Denver7 reported.
He took a closer look and noticed a sinkhole had opened up on a bridge that crosses the normally dry creek bed of the Denver Hudson Canal, CBS Colorado reported. Recent rains had flooded the dried up creek and turned it into a swollen river.
Then Logue noticed something inside the hole, the station reported.
“I said, ‘What is that?’ And I flew down over it and it’s a car in the hole,” he told the station.
Logue’s neighbor Ryan Nuanes — who happens to be a Denver firefighter — was visiting the 18-year-old and his dad and began coordinating a rescue mission. He worried time might be running out, he told Denver7.
“My concern was that the water was going to infiltrate that hole and it was going to fill it up,” he told the station.
It was already partially submerged in water, according to Colorado State Patrol, the agency investigating the crash.
The sinkhole swallowed the car about 9:15 a.m. on Saturday near Weld County Road 2 and Watkins Road in Brighton with two people inside. The 66-year-old driver had just driven the Jeep Grand Cherokee east over the bridge when the ground started giving way underneath the front of the car, officials said in an email.
The passenger side of the car started sinking, and the ground opened up into a sinkhole that swallowed the car as it overturned and landed on its roof at the bottom of the hole.
“They had six inches of room of an air pocket in there for them to breathe,” Logue told Denver7. “But the rest was water.”
Several agencies assisted in lifting the car from the hole and freeing the couple.
The male driver wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was seriously injured in the crash. The 61-year-old female passenger wore a seat belt and was not injured, officials said.
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