A Florida woman was not thinking about herself while making sure her paralyzed husband was safe as Hurricane Ian swept through Punta Gorda.
“I don’t want him to die,” Renee Smith said during an interview with NBC News on Thursday while standing amid what was left in the storm’s wake.
Her husband, Christopher, recently became paralyzed from the chest down because prostate cancer had metastasized to his spine. He was supposed to have radiation treatment Wednesday.
However, those plans were canceled due to the hurricane that ripped through the state.
She explained her method of attempting to ensure her husband’s safety:
I took some blankets and I put some holes in them with scissors and I zip-tied them to the hospital bed and then I took a big tarpaulin that had grommets and I zip-tied that over it; and then I put pillows and plastic bags and I duct-taped them to the top of the sideboard and I put pillows between the sideboard and the window because I didn’t want him to get cut up to death if the window blew in, and then I put a life jacket on him so that if the water came in he wouldn’t drown, he would float.
Once he was secure, Smith dove under the kitchen table with pillows and blankets until it was over.
When asked what she was going to do now, Smith, who suffered a broken arm, stated, “I gotta go home and feed my husband and clean him up and start my day as a caregiver. Take my trusty flashlight and go do my job.”
Video footage showed the hurricane’s strong winds and torrential rains hitting Punta Gorda:
Hurricane Ian had a devastating impact when it pummeled Florida’s west coast as a Category 4 storm this week, which left citizens reeling, according to Breitbart News.
Aerial video footage showed homes underwater and streets filled with debris:
“Roughly 2 million remained without power on Friday, as tens of thousands of linemen work to restore power and emergency crews assess the widespread damage across the state,” the outlet reported.
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