Man gave remarkably calm live TV interview while stranded twenty feet up a tree during flood

News anchors in Texas were somewhat surprised on Friday when they learned that the man they were interviewing on live TV was stuck 20 feet above flood waters in a tree. KVUE in Austin were interviewing Kerry Packer, who had earlier captured video of his car being carried by flood currents after he attempted to cross a section of road near Onion Creek that he said looked far more shallow than it was.



His wife, Cecelia Packer, then shared the video with KVUE. "Basically I was just driving down the road and there was what I thought was a little bit of water and I was just driving through it like I would and it flipped my car sideways," Packer said. He said that the currents almost tipped his car over and pushed him, by his estimates, about half a mile into the woods.


News report.

YouTube link.

But it's what he said next that shocked the anchor desk. "I swept past a tree and I jumped out of the window and climbed up a tree," he said calmly. "So I'm about 20 feet up a tree right now." The now extremely concerned news anchors immediately asked him if he was okay having been up the tree for a very long time.

Kerry Packer in the tree.

YouTube link.

"I'm fine," he said. "Thankfully there's a nice sturdy tree here and it's a little cold but I did Boy Scouts for 20 years and so I know how to keep my energy up and keep warm so I'm doing fine." Packer said he could only see water around him and said that the area was like a lake. Packer was eventually able to get down from the tree safely at 2:40pm. He had been in the tree since shortly after 9am.