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A Nebraska man and two other people nearly drowned on Saturday night as neck-deep floodwaters engulfed the elevator at his apartment building in downtown Omaha, showing terrifying videos.
Tony Luu and his friends jumped in the elevator around 10 p.m. to observe the hail damage and flash floods, he said – only to find themselves stranded on the ground floor as the water sank. ‘rushed into the hall.
“Once it got to my stomach, we kind of thought, ‘OK, this is real,'” Luu told ABC News.
“It was like something out of a movie.”
A video recorded by Luu’s friend shows him vaping when the elevator jumps and water rushes in from the bottom and the doors closed.
Later, when the floods nearly overwhelmed them, Luu’s friend – whose head is barely above the waterline – appears to be on the phone with emergency services, telling them to hurry up.
The pals managed to open the door before first responders arrived and escape with the many gallons of water, ABC said.
At this point, Luu was standing on the elevator railing to avoid sinking, according to the report.
Luu’s friend Daylon Guy told the Omaha World-Herald that four other people were stuck in another elevator in the same building. He said that no one in any of the elevators needed medical attention.
“It was quite traumatic, but they seemed to be doing well,” he told the newspaper.
Omaha was hit by up to five inches of rain in a brief window of weather on Saturday, causing severe flash flooding in the area, the National Weather Service said.
The rain left a trail of destruction across the city, with flooding reaching two to three feet on some roads, according to the World-Herald.
“The combined sewer system was overloaded,” said Steve Andersen, who heads sewer maintenance for the city of Omaha. “Some of our rain gauges showed up to 4 inches [of rain] fall an hour. We are fortunate that the rain was short lived.
Nearly 18,000 people lost electricity during the storm, the World-Herald said.
With post wires
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