Oklahoma City teenager: 'I thought I was going to die'
The first Oklahoma flood victim pulled from rushing waters at Sooner Road and Hefner Road recounts her harrowing wait for rescue.
Ariana Smith thought she was going to die as she clung to a tree for two hours and watched the murky flood waters from Monday's torrential rain rush past her feet.
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The 16-year-old Carl Albert High School student had been driving in the morning rain to her aunt's house in the Oakdale Valley subdivision to baby-sit her cousins.
She was driving east on Hefner Road when a rush of water swept her sport utility vehicle off a bridge over Deep Fork Creek near Sooner Road.
"It was good until I got to the bridge,” Smith said several hours after she was rescued and returned to the scene to watch the flood waters. "It looked less deep than it was. My car went with the current, so I rolled down my window and swam to a tree.”
Smith called her aunt for help, but the water-damaged cell phone cut off before Karen Davis could find out where her niece was stranded.
"The fire people wouldn't listen to me,” said Davis, who responded to the call for help by driving to the water's edge at Hefner Road and Sooner Road and screaming Smith's name. "I ran all over the neighborhood seeing if I could find a boat.”
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