A teenager’s heroic act — saving her pet dog during floods in Kentucky — has gone viral. Chloe Adams, 17, is photographed cradling her dog Sandy and sitting on the roof of a house with floodwaters below.
Heroic Teen and Her Brave Pup Make an Escape
“There was water as far as I could see,” she told CNN, “I had a full-blown panic attack.” But she overcame panic and heroically managed to put Sandy in a floating container. She then swam to a nearby rooftop and waited for five hours before help could arrive.
Adams and Sandy — who has been her trusted companion since Adams was a toddler — were home alone when the “nightmarish rain quickly overwhelmed the drains and the water started erupting through the kitchen tiles and encircled her house,” reported CNN. Adams first put Sandy in the water, but she couldn’t swim. She looked in the house for something to keep her dog afloat. She put Sandy inside a plastic drawer from her closet and placed the drawer on a sofa cushion. Her plan worked.
“I knew the dangers of trying to swim in deep and moving water, but I felt I had no choice,” explained Adams. Swimming in the cold water and pushing the cushion at the same time, she managed to reach the roof of the only building not underwater. Nearby, her family could only watch and talk to her before her cousin arrived by kayak.
In a Facebook post after the rescue, Terry Adams, the teen’s father, called his daughter a “hero.” And in true hero fashion, Adams said, “My heart goes out to all the other people who lost and suffered so much more than I did in this horrific devastation.”
