A Los Angeles man surely breathed a sigh of relief after he was miraculously rescued from the rapids of the rain-swollen Los Angeles River by a brave firefighter in a helicopter.
The dramatic rescue was captured on camera and shows the man clinging desperately to a wire attached to a sheer concrete wall after he had been swept into the murky waters of the Los Angeles River.
Ground and air crews from the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to a 911 call about a man who was stuck in the raging river and holding on for dear life in the Boyle Heights neighborhood at around 5 p.m. on Wednesday, March 15.
The footage shows the man holding on desperately and struggling to fight the pull of the raging waters surrounding him. A fire department officer is then lowered to the river on a cable attached to a helicopter flying in the strong winds.
There are a few heart-stopping seconds in the video as the rescuer dangling in the air tries to get into position to reach the stranded man while the strong winds keep blowing him around.
When the rescuer eventually manages to get close enough, he grabs hold of the man and attaches a hoist to his body.
For a few scary moments, the two men are both up to their chests in the swift waters of the river before the helicopter starts pulling them up to safety.
Authorities said that the victim was treated for hypothermia at the University of Southern California Medical Center in Los Angeles and fortunately did not sustain any other injuries.
It is still unclear how the man ended up in the river or how long he was in the water before getting rescued. The river water seen on the video churning all around the man is due to the recent torrential rainfall in parts of California, that caused water levels to rise sharply.
Tens of thousands of Californians remain under evacuation as flooding, landslides, and blackouts from the winter deluge wreak havoc in the state.
Governor Gavin Newsom described the extreme shift in weather from drought to wildfires to flooding as Mother Nature’s fury and clear evidence of climate change, adding that in the last few years, the weather in California has been on the two extreme spectrums and never in the middle.