Elderly Couple Rescued From Siesta Key Home During Helene: Police

SARASOTA, FL — During the height of Hurricane Helene, the Sarasota Police Department’s Emergency Response Team saved an elderly couple trapped in their Siesta Key home with “rapidly diminishing access to oxygen” for medical issues, the agency said. (Watch police bodycam footage from the rescue below.)

Deputies responded to the home, near the 3400 block of Anglin Drive, in the early hours of Sept. 27.

The couple’s granddaughter, worried about her 86-year-old grandfather, who relies on oxygen, and her 85-year-old grandmother, who has mobility issues, called 911, police said.

She told dispatchers that their home’s structure was compromised by the hurricane, and the couple was stranded on the second floor.

With roads impassable and severe flooding, four officers in a high-water rescue vehicle got to the home around 3:45 a.m. When they arrived, they learned that the man was running out of oxygen, police said.

The officers used a dining room chair to help the elderly woman, who has limited mobility, down the stairs safely.

Both individuals were carefully escorted across the bridge in a police vehicle, where Sarasota County Emergency Services were waiting. They were brought to Sarasota Memorial Hospital and reunited with their family.

Watch bodycam footage from the rescue: