Sobered up by floods

For two and a half hours they sat on the roof of a four-wheel-drive as floodwaters rose around them. They had only their cellphones for light while ‘‘looking down at your supposed death crawling up towards you . . . knowing it’s going to get you’’, one of the group said. The man, aged in his 20s, was one of nine people rescued from two vehicles stuck on Riverside Rd, Mosgiel, early on Saturday. The road was understood to have been closed. Two people had been caught in the rising floodwaters as they tried to rescue a group of seven who were later slammed by police as being intoxicated and suffering from hypothermia. Police said some of the group of seven men and women, all in their 20s, were so drunk and cold that they had to be ‘‘carried out’’. The man, who declined to be named, rejected police’s claim that his group were drunk, saying they had stopped drinking hours before. ‘‘With the water getting higher and higher and thinking you’re about to die . . . you sober up pretty quick.’’