Flooding Traps Piscataway Woman; DPW Worker Saves Her

PISCATAWAY, NJ — Several Central Jersey towns have been affected by intense rain and storm surge flooding, but in Piscataway Township a near-life-and-death scenario took place last Thursday: A local woman became trapped in flood waters in her car and a DPW foreman jumped in to save her.

The incident took place Sept. 13 during the morning rush hour on Possumtown Road under the railroad trestle. That's the road pictured above, a few hours after the flood waters had gone down, so the water was much higher when the rescue occurred. In fact, the flood water was shoulder-deep when Piscataway DPW foreman Mike Mosier jumped in.

At about 8 a.m. that morning, Mosier was out on the job, driving with a colleague in their Township-issued work truck to check on the municipal pumps that move waters away from the railroad overpass. That low-lying section of Possumtown Road is known to flood, and Piscataway had put barricades up, warning drivers not to pass through.

But when they got there, they saw that someone had moved the barricades aside. A small, four-door car was stuck in the flood waters; the car was tilting down into the water, only its backside and roof were visible. To their horror, a woman was inside the car and she was screaming for help. The water was up to her chin inside the car.

Mosier and fellow DPW worker Jason Teal scaled the embankment and climbed on top of the railroad bridge. They shouted at her to try and open her car doors and get out. But the woman was panicking and she made some kind of motion with her arm, which they took to mean that children were in the backseat.

"That's when I said I'm going in," Mosier told Patch. He threw his wallet, radio and phones onto the bridge and scaled back down the embankment and entered the floodwaters. It was about four to five feet deep and he swam to her car.

"When I got to her car, I found I could stand. The water was actually surprisingly warm and my wife always teases me that I don't enter our swimming pool unless it's 80 degrees," he recalled. "So it was funny to find the water warm. I reassured her and told her to open her front passenger door and I would help her out. She was nervous; I don't know if she could swim or not."

There were no children in the car. Standing in flood water up to his shoulders, Mosier pulled the woman out of the car and held her a lifeguard-carry position and half swam, half walked back to the side of the road.

"She was really, really grateful," he said.

Teal had called 911, but both Mosier and the woman declined medical treatment at the scene. They were shaken up by the near-death experience, but overall fine, he said. Mosier lives in Brick, NJ.

The biggest takeway from what happened last Thursday? Heed the warning when flood barricades are put up!

"People move them all the time; it's actually a huge problem," the DPW foreman said. "I am not saying she moved them. It could have been another driver before her that pushed them aside. So everyone after them thinks the water has receded. Or it's someone in a pick-up truck that thinks they can get through. Trust us: The Township monitors flooding very carefully. We will remove the signs when the water recedes."

Her car was recovered only after flood waters receded enough several hours later. Patch tried to call the woman, a local Piscataway resident who appeared to be in her early 50s, but she was at work today and her family said her cell phone was destroyed by the flood water.

Photos supplied to Patch by Piscataway Twp.