The overnight onset of Hurricane Helene has already left seven dead and millions without power across the American southeast, but one life was saved in happenstance by a Fox Weather reporter who was on the scene in time to rescue a woman drowning in a submerged vehicle.

Meteorologist Bob Van Dillen is being praised as a hero for pulling a woman from her car in Atlanta, Georgia after calling 911 only to learn that first responders wouldn’t be able to reach her in time. Abandoning his live shot, Van Dillen charged into the waist-high flood, gently guiding the flood victim out her window amid rapidly surging water. After it was all over, he told “Fox & Friends” hosts about the surreal experience. “I know that we’re swamped here with all of the 911 calls, because there are so many high-water rescues that we’ve already documented so far… [she] called 911 and, five minutes, 10 minutes, and you could hear screaming, right? You could hear through my live shot, real loud,” he said on Friday morning. “That’s her car right there. So I just said, ‘You know what? I realize I’m with you guys on the air, but I can’t let it go.’”

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Going on, Van Dillen said it took all his professional strength to “drop everything,” including his live shot, and dive into the breach. “I took my wallet out of my pants, and I went in there, waded in, got chest deep,” he recalled. “You know how it is. I was concerned that one, maybe there was a nice swift current, but the current really wasn’t that bad. But, the water temperature I was afraid of, too. The water temperature is probably about 80 [degrees]. So, all of those things were working pretty nicely, so, that being said, the water came up to about my chest.”

“She was in there, she was still strapped into her car and the water was actually rising and getting up into the car itself, so she was about, almost neck deep submerged in her own car.” Asked by Janice Dean what would have happened if he hadn’t stepped up, Van Dillen replied simply, “She would have drowned.”

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“You know, I don’t know,” Van Dillen humbly said. “I told her ‘OK, undo your seatbelt,’ she undid her seatbelt. I said, ‘Let me have your phone, let me have your bags,’ then put [her] on my back and we walked in… she’s fine, she was in shock,” Van Dillen said. “She was cold, shivering, so I gave her one of my shirts and she was in our car, just warming up, about 20 minutes later the fire department came, saw that we were OK and went on to the next rescue, wherever they’re going,” he continued. “Her husband just picked her up about five minutes ago.”