If you needed any more reasons to admire firefighters, the Crawford Township Volunteer Fire Department in Moyock, North Carolina, has presented you with more. Just before 1 a.m. Sunday, the department received a call about an overturned vehicle near its Shawboro Road fire station.
“When we arrived, the driver was out of the vehicle,” Assistant Chief Tim Walter tells Daily Paws. “We believe she was tossed out of the car since it was a convertible with the top down.” When firefighters arrived, the car was upside down and partially buried in a canal that runs alongside the road.
Walter comments, “It’s full of all this mud.” “You take a step into it and sink about a foot beneath the surface. There are also several water moccasins and snapping turtles swimming in the area.” The responding firefighters were alerted that a dog was in the car, but the dog was still missing when they arrived. The responding team heard whimpering coming from the front of the car and went into action while analyzing the situation.
The crew flipped the black sports vehicle back onto its wheels with the help of Lantz Towing and rescued a wet and scared—but otherwise unharmed—dog from the passenger seat. “We rescued the puppy under the dash floorboard where there was an air pocket despite the car being upside down in the water for 20 minutes,” the department writes on Facebook.
“The dog was giddy,” Walter explains. “I was simply grateful to be alive.” The car driver was arrested by police, according to the Facebook post, while they investigated the reason for the crash. Meanwhile, the dog accompanied another member of the family home for some well-deserved slumber.