business ideas

Stories of neighbors taking action to help one another in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene continue to surface. In western North Carolina, cell phone video shows attendees of a wedding rehearsal pausing to rescue a woman from floodwaters.Eddie Hunnell, the father of the groom, heard a woman had become trapped in her home near an inn in Grassy Creek, North Carolina.Hunnell asked the owner of the inn for a life jacket, rope and an oar, he told CNN. After rushing outside, he encountered the womans husband, Phil Worth, who explained his wife, Leslie, was stuck in their house and couldnt get out.Hunnell and Worth grabbed a canoe and tried to reach Leslie but couldnt.We were trying to figure out how to get her out, and we were running out of ideas, Hunnell said. I was pretty confident the house was going to eventually collapse, and my biggest concern was that it would collapse on Leslie.Eventually, the wedding party noticed the roof of another house floating downstream toward the Worth home. The roof debris struck the home where Leslie was trapped, video provided by the Hunnell family shows.Soon, her home began to tilt under the force of the floodwater, and a chunk of the house detached.Leslie was right there, standing in it, waist-deep in water, Hunnell said.Everyone began yelling at her to jump.I hopped in the canoe to try to get to her. I couldnt maneuver it well enough. The water was too fast, and the wind was blowing too much, Hunnell said.So, I jumped in and started swimming to her, he said. Id been looking for 30 minutes for a solution, and I didnt have one. So, I was out of ideas, and I just thought, my wifes going to kill me, and I jumped.Hunnell made it to Leslie, grabbed the back of her life vest and instructed her to kick as hard as she could toward the shore, he said. The two eventually got dumped into slower waters and swam ashore.Those waiting on shore broke out into tears as the pair made it back to land safely.Despite the chaotic afternoon, Hunnell invited the Worths to the wedding rehearsal dinner.They came in the clothes they had on. I think we actually got Leslie some clothes, and I think we got Phil some pants, he said.The next day the wedding carried on with about half the guest list and no power lit by more than 100 candles. Neighbors used chainsaws to clear roadways.The wedding turned out great, Hunnell said. Everything before the wedding was somewhat of a disaster.CNNs Kayla Tausche, Sam Fossum, Haley Talbot, Sara Smart, Emma Tucker, Andy Rose and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.