More Than 100 Assisted-Living Residents Rescued from '4 to 5 Feet' of Flood Water Following Hurricane Milton

Mar. 15, 2025

Vehicles drive through flood waters in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton in Lake Maggiore, Florida.Photo:MIGUEL J. RODRIGUEZ CARRILLO/AFP via Getty

MIGUEL J. RODRIGUEZ CARRILLO/AFP via Getty

More than 130 people — many of whom were elderly — had to be rescued after the assisted-living facility where they live flooded.

“I was in bed obviously, and then I didn’t realize it was flooded at first, but then I heard a crash,” one resident named Theresa told the outlet. “A refrigerator and a microwave oven on top of it [toppled and] it just blew out.”

“[The water] was coming up in my bed, to the edge of my bed,” Theresa continued. “It was terrible, and the water was so cold.”

An employee of the facility told CNN that it took a “pretty good while” until rescue crews arrived to help.

“I got woken up [at] about 2 a.m. The building, it started to flood,” the employee said. “So, I had to get up. I had to react, had to get dressed and basically make sure all the residents were okay.”

A drone image shows a flooded street due to Hurricane Milton in Siesta Key, Florida, on October 10, 2024.MIGUEL J. RODRIGUEZ CARRILLO/AFP via Getty

She added that several furniture items in the assisted-living facility began floating due to the floodwaters. “The chairs were just floating, the couches were floating, everything was floating,” she told CNN.

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

The facility also housed additional assisted-living facility members who had been evacuated from Manatee County ahead of the storm, according to the employee. They were then loaded into a school bus and moved to an elementary school.

The employee told CNN she thought the facility would be safe because it was not in an evacuation zone. While they did not need to worry about the storm surge, heavy rains ended up causing flooding in areas officials had not expected.

There have also been 17 people confirmed dead as a result of the storm, as of Saturday, Oct. 12, according toNBC News.

source: people.com