One local couple helped save elderly people, stuck in Harvey’s floodwaters, from right here in Tampa Bay. They got a photo from inside a nursing home outside Houston, and used social media to start a rescue.
"Crazy and heartbreaking, just heartbreaking, I mean to see everybody there," Kimberly Mcintosh said.
A photo showing rising floodwater, as nursing home residents in Dickinson, Texas are stuck. Some sit in wheelchairs in water.
“The feeling of helplessness because you just want to help, and you want to get there to do something and we couldn't do anything," Mcintosh said.
Nearly a thousand miles away, Mcintosh got a text from her mom, who owns La Vita Bella Nursing Home in Dickinson, Texas. Here in Tampa, she called disaster services in Texas every ten minutes and sent a tweet for help.
"No one believed the picture so we were trying to say yes this is a legitimate picture we need help because everybody thought it was too unreal to be true and that was really devastating to us," Mcintosh said.
The tweet reached thousands of people, prompting a rescue. All 15 residents were airlifted out by helicopter.
"By the time the first picture posted, within three hours they were actually helicoptered out, so that's pretty amazing," Mcintosh’s husband said.
11 people went to the hospital in stable condition.
"I just would imagine anybody who has grandparents and you know you think of them in that situation and they just needed they just needed help," Mcintosh said.
