After Sunday's earthquake, with the power out and no water, 19-year-old Shannon Sloan decided to drive out of Lanikai to get some drinking water.

At 8:30 p.m., Sloan was approaching a police blockade set up to handle traffic in the area when her right front tire went straight into a ditch created by a broken water main that was coned off.

Sloan tried to reverse but couldn't, so she called her father, who came out of their Makali'i Street home to give it a go. She got out of her car and walked around to the car's front while her dad tried to reverse the vehicle.

As she stood by, the asphalt beneath her gave way and Sloan found herself in a deep well of rushing, muddy water.

"When I first fell in I wasn't freaked out, I was in shock. When I realized the water was pulling me down I began to panic," said Sloan, a University of Hawai'i student who works at Jamba Juice in Kailua. "I couldn't touch the bottom."

Nearby Honolulu police officer Zane Hamrick, 43, a 16-year police veteran, was directing traffic and saw Sloan go down.

"She was yelling at me that her car was stuck and I was yelling at her to back up and get away from the water main and then she just disappeared," said Hamrick, an Army veteran. "It just happened in a split second. It looked like a safe area but there was no earth underneath it."

Hamrick ran over to the spot where Sloan vanished and saw her spinning in a mix of sand, water and mud as water poured out of the 6-inch broken main and eroded the earth around her. Sloan was visible for a second, then disappeared under water, he said.

Without thinking, he jumped into the swirling muck in full uniform, weighed down by his 15-pound gun belt.

"I jumped in and felt around and I felt here and just tried to push her to the edge and up onto the roadway, but it was difficult to do because the water was pulling us," he said.

"Once she got up, it sucked me under couple times. It was like swimming against the tide, dark and cold. I'm glad it was fresh water. It turned out great."

Other officers assisted by Sloan's father were able to help Hamrick out of the ditch.

"He did a really great job," Sloan said.

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.