A man and his dog were rescued from their sailboat off the coast of Florida as Hurricane Helene approached the state.
The 36-foot sailboat “became disabled” and “started taking on water approximately 25 miles off Sanibel Island” on Thursday, Sept. 26, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
Crew members with Air Station Clearwater came to the duo’s rescue, as seen in footage shared by the agency’s Southeast division.
In the brief clip, a rescuer can be seen getting lowered into the water before swimming over to the disabled sailboat, where the man and dog were waiting.
Wearing life preservers, the duo entered the water as well and swam a short distance in choppy water before rescuers in a helicopter could hoist them to safety.
The end of the clip showed the man holding and petting his dog as he high-fived one of the rescuers onboard the helicopter.
The man and dog “were reportedly in good medical condition” after the incident and were “brought to Southwest Florida International airport to meet with EMS,” according to the Coast Guard. Meanwhile, the sailboat is still “adrift and disabled.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(702x409:704x411):format(webp)/US-Coast-Guard-Southeast-Hurricane-Helene-092724-f7a4b2d36c1a48f489cc8766e16d9877.jpg)
At least 10 people died, including seven people in Georgia, after Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm in the Big Bend area of Florida on Thursday, Sept. 26.
Two of the victims died in Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis said one person died after a sign fell on top of a car traveling on Interstate 4 in Tampa, and another died in Dixie County after a tree fell onto their home, according to CBS affiliate WINK-TV.
As of Friday, Sept. 27, millions of people are without power across southeastern portions of the United States, according to PowerOutage.us.
At one point, more than one million people were without power in Florida alone, but that number has since dropped.
