News crews and media try their best to maintain the role of observers and documentarians during disasters — largely to stay out of danger and the paths of rescue crews — but every now and again, action becomes necessary.

On Wednesday morning, CNN reporter, Drew Griffin, and his crew were taping in Beaumont, Tex. when a truck turned off a flooded road and into a deep drainage ditch, sweeping the truck and the man inside, later identified as Jerry Sumerall, slowly away.

As Griffin notes after the successful rescue, there was no time to dial 9-1-1.

Watch: