Poseidon's Fury
She had the look of panic in her eyes, and my voice over the falling rain and the rushing water that had washed out the road wasn’t enough to allay the fear I could see in her returned gaze; the fear that we wouldn’t be able to get her out in time. The fear that she had made the worst possible decision and that there was no going back now—the full weight of that realization sinking in and that she might never get home again. Truthfully, I wasn’t yet certain that we’d be able to fight the water and the cold fast enough to save her; who knows how long she had already been in there. A freak thunderstorm after a weekend of record snowfall had turned many of the city streets into rivers of very cold, very high, water. Thankfully the storm hadn’t started until well after midnight and was supposed to end before six a.m., so most of the city’s residents were sleeping peacefully against the sound of distant thunder and wouldn’t find the storm’s damage until morning when the water had time to recede. There were still people who had to be out in it, however, and for some of them the water covered patches of roadway weren’t enough to dissuade them from their normal daily routine, whether that was a commute to work or a drunken drive home from the bar. 911 dispatch beckoned us to assist the travelers whose hubris didn’t translate into safe passage; there were disabled cars in various levels of watery burial all over Lorain County.
She had almost made it through, but missed the curvature of the road and the mistake had sent her car into a ditch, sinking the entire front end into the murky depths. She had managed to get herself to the backseat and rolled down a window from which she reached up and out toward us with grasping hands like hungry baby bird mouths from the nest. We had our turn-out gear on and I wondered about its buoyancy as I made my way through the now thigh-deep water. I felt heavy and the ice cold water rushed into my boots and sent a shockwave through my spine. I focused my attention on the tag line around me and pushed the other thoughts out of my head. I knew the hands at the end of the line and the ones right next to me wouldn’t let me find harm’s way. With one hand under her armpit and the other holding the vice-grip of her frightened hand, we pulled her out of the window and into the water with us. Her lips were blue and her face was ashen and she trembled as we walked her to higher ground, to the awaiting squad. It was one of dozens of similar calls around the county in the six-hour period from the storm’s start to finish; we walked over each others’ radio traffic and donned soaked turn-outs and clenched our teeth each time the engine inched through the stopped water, hoping we would make it. I thought about Buzz and how he died rescuing someone in the exact same situation just ten miles south of us. How that was only six years ago. How that’s just the risk that you sign on to take and how you rarely think about it except in the face of rising flood water or a smoke filled second floor in which you can’t even see the bale on the hose line. And that it’s not about the glory of it, or even for telling the story, but that for that microcosm you are of useful, specific, meaningful purpose. How there is no word yet invented to describe what that feels like.
She was twenty miles west of us, maybe close to the same time that Rob and I traversed the deep dark cold to our first call that night. Her 911 call was probably more pleading than the one we responded to because as she made it her car hadn’t yet found the lowest spot it would settle in and she probably still felt it surging downward, still watched the water bifurcate more and more of her windshield. They searched everywhere in the area that the call came from and everywhere in the vicinity and didn’t find her until the next morning, eight hours later when the enemy had relented enough to allow them to be able to see. She was a nurse and driving to work and probably never thought it would be the last time she’d take that route when she started into the high water. I wish I could go back, find her, and tell her. It’s not at all like driving through snow. When it’s that deep you don’t have the option to just get stuck and wait for a tow truck to come get you out. When it’s that cold the hypothermia steals your body heat and your ability to think clearly and reason along with it. I only hope that it happened quickly. That even if she didn't hear the sirens, that she knew she wasn't alone.
She had almost made it through, but missed the curvature of the road and the mistake had sent her car into a ditch, sinking the entire front end into the murky depths. She had managed to get herself to the backseat and rolled down a window from which she reached up and out toward us with grasping hands like hungry baby bird mouths from the nest. We had our turn-out gear on and I wondered about its buoyancy as I made my way through the now thigh-deep water. I felt heavy and the ice cold water rushed into my boots and sent a shockwave through my spine. I focused my attention on the tag line around me and pushed the other thoughts out of my head. I knew the hands at the end of the line and the ones right next to me wouldn’t let me find harm’s way. With one hand under her armpit and the other holding the vice-grip of her frightened hand, we pulled her out of the window and into the water with us. Her lips were blue and her face was ashen and she trembled as we walked her to higher ground, to the awaiting squad. It was one of dozens of similar calls around the county in the six-hour period from the storm’s start to finish; we walked over each others’ radio traffic and donned soaked turn-outs and clenched our teeth each time the engine inched through the stopped water, hoping we would make it. I thought about Buzz and how he died rescuing someone in the exact same situation just ten miles south of us. How that was only six years ago. How that’s just the risk that you sign on to take and how you rarely think about it except in the face of rising flood water or a smoke filled second floor in which you can’t even see the bale on the hose line. And that it’s not about the glory of it, or even for telling the story, but that for that microcosm you are of useful, specific, meaningful purpose. How there is no word yet invented to describe what that feels like.
She was twenty miles west of us, maybe close to the same time that Rob and I traversed the deep dark cold to our first call that night. Her 911 call was probably more pleading than the one we responded to because as she made it her car hadn’t yet found the lowest spot it would settle in and she probably still felt it surging downward, still watched the water bifurcate more and more of her windshield. They searched everywhere in the area that the call came from and everywhere in the vicinity and didn’t find her until the next morning, eight hours later when the enemy had relented enough to allow them to be able to see. She was a nurse and driving to work and probably never thought it would be the last time she’d take that route when she started into the high water. I wish I could go back, find her, and tell her. It’s not at all like driving through snow. When it’s that deep you don’t have the option to just get stuck and wait for a tow truck to come get you out. When it’s that cold the hypothermia steals your body heat and your ability to think clearly and reason along with it. I only hope that it happened quickly. That even if she didn't hear the sirens, that she knew she wasn't alone.
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