I took the raft and went through the gate that was here and carried it all the way back to the house. I could hear the people but couldn't see them. These people were on the roof and somehow I got them and I just don't know how we got them down and into the boat. I walked up to this house, and the doorway was open, and I took one or two steps inside and felt something on my leg and it was the leg of a man. It was a husband and wife, I found out the next day, an elderly couple, and they had drowned almost immediately the sea wall was breached. Sure looks different now. At the town hall, nurse Dot Smith was waiting in vain for survivors. The first woman they brought in, I thought, "If she's dead, the others are." Sure enough they were drowned. Two children were brought in next and I put them all together on trestles close to each other, then the father was brought in. By the time I got to this area to get these people off, they had certainly been on the roof of those houses since four or five o'clock in the afternoon, and this was like . at night. With wind blowing mph, and they were soaking wet, and the rain and the freezing water, it would be amazing to me if all the people that I got out all survive. After four hours in freezing conditions, the cold finally took its toll. I was aware late in the evening that I was freezing, I couldn't move my legs. I remember thinking, "Oh, boy, you're in big trouble!" I had to hang on to the raft because there were people in it, and that's the last I remember. I said to the ambulance men, "How long's he been like this?" They'd just fished him out of the water as his wet suit had got torn. I asked for scissors as we had to cut the legs off the wet suit. Somebody said, "His legs will have to come off" and... that was really frightening. I thought, "Oh, boy, this is bad news!" Despite his injuries, Reis had rescued people. A week later, when news of his heroic act had spread, he was in front of the newsreel cameras reenacting it. In the days that followed, bodies were recovered. Thousands of survivors now found themselves homeless.