• A Texas woman was found alive inside a submerged Jeep after a local fisherman reported the vehicle.

• She told police she was in the Jeep for hours before being rescued and treated for hypothermia.

• A survival expert said it’s rare to survive for an extended period of time in a submerged car.

A fisherman in Texas called the police after discovering what appeared to be a Jeep almost completely submerged in a lake. When authorities arrived they found a woman inside who was still alive.

The call to the Marion County Sheriff’s Office came in on Friday morning, according to a press release. A fisherman at Lake O’ the Pines said he saw a black Jeep underwater about 40 feet from a boat ramp.

Deputies arrived on the scene about 18 minutes later and determined it was too dangerous to wade out into the water, Capt. Chuck Rogers told Insider. They waited for the wrecker service that had already been requested to arrive. The fisherman then took the wrecker employee out in his boat to the Jeep, which was affixed with a hook and cable to pull it out of the water.

“It was at that time they saw the woman,” Rogers said. “The fisherman and wrecker employee were able to help the woman from the jeep. They placed her into the boat and she was brought to shore.”

The woman was placed in a vehicle to help her warm up, Rogers said, adding it was colder than normal that morning and had been raining. He said it was unclear exactly how long the Jeep was in the water, but that the woman said it was at least a few hours.

Emergency services arrived and treated the woman for hypothermia. She was then transferred to a local hospital.

In the course of their investigation, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office discovered the woman had been listed as a missing person by the Longview Police Department in Texas, located about 25 miles south of where the Jeep was found.

Longview Police told Insider they were unable to release any information about the case, the identity of the woman, or when she had been reported missing.

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The specifics of the woman’s survival — how much water had flooded into the vehicle or how much air was still available — are unclear.

Cat Bigney, a survival expert who has taught at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School for decades, told Insider it’s not unheard of for a person in a submerged vehicle to survive hours underwater, though it is rare.

She said a vehicle submerged in water is “an urgent survival situation” because brain death typically begins within four minutes of oxygen deprivation.

However, she said there have been cases where people have survived for hours or been revived, particularly when the water is cold. “This is a physiological uncommon situation that is still being studied,” Bigney said, citing potential explanations like metabolic shutdown.

In 2013, a man survived three days underwater in a submerged tug boat off of Nigeria. The man had located an air pocket and was able to survive until divers recovering bodies found him. In 2015, an 18-month-old girl spent 14 hours in a submerged car and survived after an accident sent her mother’s vehicle into a river.

Bigney said if you find yourself in a situation like this, the most important thing is to stay calm.

“Act quickly but don’t panic. You may only have a minute to get out, but you must stay focused,” she said.

If you are able to, open the door. Often that is not an option due to the pressure of the water, in which case you should open the window. If you are struggling to roll the window down, you may need to be creative to find something in the car that you can use to break it.

“Worst case, the car door can often be opened when the car is fully submerged and pressure equilibrium is reached after the car fills with water,” she said.

Be careful of broken glass when exiting the vehicle, and do not worry about grabbing any belongings.

In the event you can’t get out of the car, Bigney said you can use a bag of some sort, like a trash bag, to capture remaining air before the vehicle fills.

“This will only help for a while,” she said, “but could make a difference.”

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