American Woman Secures Paralysed Husband to Hospital Bed During Hurricane: "Don't Want Him to Die"

• When the destructive Hurricane Ian hit Florida, Renee Smith had to use creative methods to save her husband's life
• She used duct tape, tarpaulin, blankets, pillows, and zip ties to tie her terminally ill husband to his hospital bed to prevent him from falling
• Smith also gave her husband, who became immobile as a result of prostate cancer, a life jacket in case water flooded their home

A woman in Florida had to get creative by using materials in the house to tie her immobile husband to the bed during Hurricane Ian, which battered their Punta Gorda home.

Water flooded their home

Renee Smith used duct tape, tarpaulin, blankets, pillows, and zip ties to tie her terminally ill husband to his hospital bed to prevent him from falling and also gave him a life jacket in case of water flooded their home, some 24 miles north of Fort Myers.

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“I don’t want him to die,” Renee Smith told NBC News on Thursday September 29, in an emotional interview.

Smith's husband, Christopher, became immobile from the chest down due to prostate cancer that metastasized to his spine, and the two had just come from the hospital.

He was scheduled to undergo radiation treatment on Wednesday, September 28, but it was cancelled due to the hurricane, which made landfall Wednesday afternoon and knocked out power for more than 2.6 million people across Florida.

It was terrifying

"It was terrifying, I took some blankets, put some holes in them with scissors and I zip-tied them to the hospital bed. Then I took a big tarpaulin that had grommets and I zip-tied that over it; and put pillows, plastic bags and I duct-taped them to the top of the sideboard.

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"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, she added.”

Smith hid under the kitchen table

After ensuring her husband's safety, Smith hid under the kitchen table and made a fort using pillows and blankets.

Smith says she lived through Hurricane Charley in 2004 and said Ian was much more powerful, unlike anything they had ever experienced before.

"Charley was less than an hour, the sun came out afterward, there was no torrential rain," she said.

"Ian, on the other hand, was awful and long-lasting with the back end of the hurricane as powerful as the front end," Smith added.

She recalled hearing torrential rain but being too afraid to look through the windows into the darkness outside.

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Chimney getting ripped off the roof

"It got dark in the middle of the day. It was almost like nighttime and when the rain started it was like snow. You couldn't see, " she recalled.

The devoted wife remained downstairs in the kitchen, hiding in her fort and waiting for the storm to pass.

"You could hear the chimney getting ripped off the roof. I was afraid it was going to come in through the roof and crush me even though I was under the table," she said.

Smith has had no time to rest, even though her arm is injured.

Devastation across Florida

Across Florida, millions of residents are confronted with devastation and a long road to recovery.

In Charlotte County, where the Smiths live, at least six people died following the hurricane, County Commissioner Christopher Constance said.

At least nine hospitals in Lee County, where the hurricane first hit, were still without water as of Thursday, and thousands of residents remained trapped at home.

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Hurricane Ian pounds Florida

In related news, Hurricane Ian slammed into the coast of southwest Florida as a monster Category 4 storm on Wednesday, with powerful winds and torrential rains threatening "catastrophic" damage and flooding.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said the eye of the "extremely dangerous" hurricane made landfall just after 3:00 pm (1900 GMT) on the barrier island of Cayo Costa, west of the city of Fort Myers.

Dramatic television footage from the coastal city of Naples showed floodwaters surging into beachfront homes, submerging roads and sweeping away vehicles.

Source: TUKO.co.ke