Watch: Florida Man Recalls Harrowing Story of How His Two Best Friends Were Killed By Hurricane Ian While Saving Their Wives

A Florida resident on Monday told Fox News host Charles Payne the harrowing story of how his two best friends both died after they were swept away by water last week as Hurricane Ian ravaged the area.

Mike Yost of Fort Myers Beach explained to Payne, who was filling in on Your World for Neil Cavuto, how his two best friends were killed by the storm’s surge after they each got their wives to safety.

He and others decided to ride out the storm after 2004’s Hurricane Charley failed to significantly flood the area.

“That’s why I thought, well, we’re on the second floor,” he said. “Everybody thought, ‘Charley never made it to the top floor here.'”

Yost told Payne after he witnessed the storm surge take his mailbox out, he knew Ian was a different animal. He texted a number of people and told them he thought he had made a mistake by staying behind.

He took to the second floor of a home and planned to hold onto an air mattress. He said his hope was the storm surge, which he estimated to be 14 feet, did not reach the ceiling of the second floor, and it never did.

Two men he described as his best friends were not so lucky. Both died in the flood waters, he said as he became emotional.

“My two best friends on the beach,” Yost said. “They both saved their wives. And I know Damon probably – from what I hear – went back in for his little dog and that was the end of him. But their wives made it. And the dogs made it.”

One of his friends who perished, a man he said was named Mitch, was able to get his wife Mary to relative safety. Yost said the woman held on to some deck railing for four hours as other neighbors, some of them elderly, also clung for dear life.

Watch above, via Fox News.