Photo by Walter Allread
Reunited
Her car behind them, co-op members Evelyn Fonseca and Curtis Moseley reunite with TCE’s Dave Paulling and Rickey Hanes (far right) before Thanksgiving. “They are truly heroes,” she says.
TWO TRI-COUNTY members recently had a chance to thank two co-op employees who came to their rescue during October’s flooding.
Evelyn Fonseca and Curtis Moseley of Eastover were driving to work on Congress Road about 4 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 4, when they suddenly found themselves in deep trouble.
“I could see water coming down the side of the road,” Fonseca recalls. “I thought it wasn’t going to be that serious. So I said, ‘Oh, we can drive right over it. That’s not a problem.’
“We’re steady driving, but the car kept turning off,” she says. “So I said, ‘Well, I’m going back.’”
Rising floodwaters stopped them cold. Fonseca engaged the emergency brake, but water was still shifting the car. They started to get out.
“When I opened my door, and the water came up, I said, ‘This is real serious now,’” Fonseca remembers. “I said, ‘Oh, Lord, we’re going to die!’”
‘We’d better go get them’
Fortunately, Tri-County’s operations manager, Rickey Hanes, and maintenance man, Dave Paulling, came along. They’d been out since midnight, relieving linemen who had restored power for more than a day.
At first, the men thought the sedan was unoccupied. Hanes soon realized otherwise: “I said, ‘Dave, somebody’s in the car. They’re hitting their brake lights. We’d better go get them.’”
Paulling suggested, “Pull up beside them. You’ll block that water.”
Hanes eased the one-and-a-half-ton co-op truck forward. “Dave got out and stood between the truck and their car,” Hanes says. “He held onto his door and opened their door. We had just enough room for them to get out.”
Fonseca and Paulling laugh as they recall her first words to him. “She asked if we had a chain to tow them with,” Paulling says. “I told her, ‘We don’t have time for no chain! Get in the … truck!”
“He was very clear about that!” Fonseca says.
She and Moseley climbed into the truck’s back seat—and not a moment too soon. Hanes says, “I started backing up. I could feel my truck starting to shake and slide a little bit. We eased on out of there.”
Moments later, floodwaters took the Plymouth, Hanes says. “I said, ‘There she goes!’ Down the creek it went.”
He adds, “They would have been gone with it.”
Fonseca doesn’t doubt it either: “They saved our lives,” she says. “They truly are heroes. The Lord sent them.”
Advice to live by
She urges fellow co-op members to avoid driving into moving water.
“Mother Nature is so powerful, it took the car and turned it upside down. Don’t underestimate Mother Nature,” Fonseca says. “And don’t underestimate the Tri-County heroes!”
Postscript
Later, after Hanes and Paulling took the couple home, Hanes noticed search-and-rescue teams in the area. “I said, ‘Dog! Where are all these helicopters and trucks coming from?!’” he recalls.
Fonseca’s Plymouth had been spotted in the creek, upside down and taillights up. “They were looking for them!” says Hanes.
He pulled over and told an emergency worker, “No, they’re fine. I took them home this morning!”