Jamel Lanee' and Jeff Patterson, WFLA – PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) – Pinellas County was inundated with rain Wednesday. Flood waters caused cars to stall out on dozens of streets and forced residents out of their homes.
A driver was forced into a ditch on Georgiana Street and Hillsdale Avenue in Largo. He was trying to make a turn.
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"The husband was already out, but the wife, it was an old couple and the wife was still stuck in there," Alexis Edwards said.
Edwards and her friend, Brittany Moore, captured the dramatic rescue on cell phone video.
"They were trying to help her out and as they were helping her, the car was just sinking like really fast," she said.
Emergency crews pulled her out and rushed her to the hospital.
Residents were forced out of the Autumn Chase Apartments. At least four units in the rear of the complex have water inside because the retention pond is overflowing.
Phyllis Petrillo wore rain boots and carried an umbrella, staring at swiftly running water through her apartment complex in Largo.
"I've been home most of the day and I came in this morning and found the firefighters trying to deter me from going back in and now I see why," Petrillo said.
Lonzer Stewart Jr. was also keeping an eye on the water rushing by his apartment. "I hope something going to be done about it; there's a lot of people losing a lot of stuff out here," Stewart said.
Another neighbor said she was very scared.
"Oh my God, this is my first time. I've ever been through anything like this and I am petrified. I'm going inside; I've heard my apartment is under water and I'm going inside to get my animals," a neighbor said.
Neighbor Alexis Campos grabbed what he could and got out. "Well hopefully everything turns out okay, but we're trying to figure out what we're going to do and where we're going to stay where ever," Campos said.
One woman rushed home from work to find her carpets drenched from water. She immediately went to look for her cats.
Largo officials begin evacuating resident early Wednesday morning as rain from Tropical Depression 9, slammed the area.
Throughout Pinellas County streets and roads flooded. On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street at 70th Avenue North, high water made the street nearly impassable. City workers closed off 70th Avenue North to keep cars from getting into deep water.
Dzemel Bekavac's car was flooded out when he tried to leave his home to get medicine for a sick child. "I made it out and was coming back; there was other cars driving through it and it just stalled out. That was it. I let it sit in the water and my neighbor pushed it in for me," Bekavac said.