From Surprising Power
With the wipers going full blast, Rhonda Richards could barely see through her windshield. A cold rain was pounding rural York County, Pennsylvania, on November 16, 2006, and now Leibs Creek had burst its banks and was rushing across Hollow Roadin front of her. She slowed and stopped, engine running. Rhonda and her son Matt, 15, had come to pick up his five-year-old cousin, Jake, at a bus stop. Jake’s mother couldn’t get there in the treacherous weather. Flooding had blocked her driveway.
Matt was fond of his cousin, a sensitive little kid. He liked to roughhouse with him and teach him stuff like wrestling moves. They played soccer together. Recently Matt and his father had taken Jake on a hunting trip. Out in the woods before dawn, the boys stood together and watched the sky lighten. It was awesome.
Matt slogged forward, waving his hands above his head. With every step, the stream grew deeper. Its power was surprising. He had a hard time keeping his balance.
Rhonda watched Matt shuffle up the road and glanced at the yellow bus creeping toward them. A hundred feet away, its bright caution lights blinked on as it slowed to a stop. Rhonda had Matt in the corner of her eye—then he vanished.
Had he tripped? Rhonda hurried toward the spot where she’d last seen her son. Nothing. No one. Then she saw something just above the rushing water on the left side of the road—it was Matt’s head. She screamed.
It took Matt a few moments to understand what had happened. He’d stepped into a roadside culvert that was completely invisible under the runoff from Leibs Creek. As he hit the face of a wedge-shaped concrete box that funneled the creek under the road, his body twisted, and his back was pinned against the upper ledge of the structure by the tremendous force of water swirling through it.
Only the teen’s athletic quickness and strength enabled him to grasp the upper edge before being swept below. He wasn’t quick enough, however, to keep his legs from hooking underneath the lip of the structure. He was bent backward in an L shape, clamped like a man on a medieval torture rack.
Holding On
The water was now about five inches over the top of the culvert, and Matt had to strain to keep his head above the surface. Though he’d shouted to his mother to keep away, she appeared above him. Leaning down, Rhonda worked her hands into the water, grasped Matt under his armpits and pulled with all her strength. The water rose to just below Matt’s chin. Rhonda Richards yelled for help.
Lee Greely and Lucas Vincent had been friends since they were in elementary school. Now the teenagers, schoolmates of Matt’s, worked after school as cooks at a local restaurant. That afternoon, Lee couldn’t make it home because of the flooded roads and had detoured to Luke’s house to wait for the waters to recede.
Curious, the boys walked in the rain to Hollow Road to see how badly it had flooded. They saw the Richards’s car stopped in the road and watched Matt get out and start wading through the water. Suddenly he seemed to fall and disappear. It’s the culvert, Luke thought. If Matt had been swept in, he could be trapped and drown. The woman by the car screamed, and the boys raced down the hill to help her.
But with Lee on one side of Matt and Luke on the other, each pulling on an arm as hard as they could, they found it was impossible to lift him. Rhonda positioned herself above and behind Matt and got her hands under his armpits at the same time. All three pulled again. Nothing.
“My legs are caught down there,” Matt told them. He was choking. The water rushing against his chest had forced his jacket and layered T-shirts so tightly against his throat that he was strangling. While the boys held Matt’s arms, Rhonda worked to strip off his jacket and shirts. Water surged around her and around Matt’s face. Again, they tried to lift him, but there was still no movement.
Fighting to stay on their feet, the boys were beginning to tire. All they could do was hold Matt’s arms up and try to keep his head above the water. His white, frightened face was turned upward into the driving rain.
Rhonda’s screams attracted others. Someone called 911. Mercifully, one neighbor came, guided little Jake away before he could see the horrific scene and took him home.
Wayne Vincent, Luke’s father, arrived and joined in the effort with men from the neighborhood. But like the boys before them, they exhausted themselves and could do little more than hold Matt’s head above water.
To cushion her son from slamming into the concrete, Rhonda knelt in the water and forced her hand down behind Matt’s back. The force of the water crushed her thumb and broke a bone in her hand.
The torrent was so strong, it stripped Matt, tearing off his pants, underwear and his prized new boots. He’d been trapped for 15 minutes, and his lips began to turn gray. “Mom, I’m not going to make it,” he said. “I can’t hold on much longer.”
Hypothermia Kills
The 911 calls brought Fire Chief Ira Walker, Jr., and EMS 1st Lieutenant Dave Ober of the Eureka Volunteer Fire & Ambulance Company. They’d been out on duty in other storm-ravaged spots in the county when the first emergency alert told them that a “child” was caught in a storm drain.
The message was like a blow to the stomach. Four years earlier, during a similar downpour on Mother’s Day, they’d received a call that a woman and her child were trapped in a car in a raging stream. When Ober’s crew first arrived, they stretched the fire truck’s tower ladder as far as they could, but it was too short. Ober had watched helplessly as the water lifted the car from its perch and sent it tumbling down the stream. Neither mother nor child survived.
“The fire rescue is coming, Matt,” Rhonda told her son when she heard the sirens. “Keep fighting.” Matt couldn’t respond. He’d been in the water for nearly a half hour and was chilled to the bone.
Ober arrived first and ushered the frantic mother away to the side. Walker couldn’t swim and was terrified of this kind of water, but he felt compelled to do something. A former all-county lineman on his high school’s football team, the 270-pound Walker believed he could easily boost Matt out.
In his haste to help, though, Walker miscalculated. He stepped over the edge of the culvert and fell in. Just before he pitched under, his men grabbed him. But one of his legs was bent down and around the lip, the other stretched out above. He was pinioned at the groin, half of his body underwater, but he was now closer to Matt and better able to get a grip down low around him.
For protection, Walker put on a harness and had the rope tied to the bumper of the fire engine. He and Matt were now almost side by side. The teen had been remarkably calm, but now Walker heard his tired, quiet voice. “Don’t let me die,” he said.
Walker wrapped his arms around the boy and used all his strength to free him. But the big man was dumbfounded to discover he couldn’t move the boy an inch from the fluid force.
Walker and Ober could see the effect of the cold, rushing water chilling Matt. Hypothermia kills. They were afraid he’d give in to the cold and give up before the water receded.
About that time, a tow truck driver, who was also a volunteer firefighter, arrived. He’d picked up the report about the incident on his pager. Together the assembled men wrapped a two-inch nylon strap around Matt’s torso and connected it to the tow truck’s winch cable. Then the driver carefully cranked up the machine until the cable was taut, to hold Matt in place. But even with the truck’s support, the men couldn’t free him.
On the sidelines, Rhonda Richards was distraught. She wanted to return to Matt, but people held her back and tried to comfort her.
Pulled Free
Walker was still in the freezing water. He and the others racked their brains to come up with something. Maybe, if he got down a bit farther and caught hold of Matt’s leg, he could angle it and reduce the pressure. But it demanded an enormous personal risk. Walker would be leaning into the mouth of the drain, where the force of the water was concentrated.
Positioned to the right of the boy, Walker leaned into the torrent. He lowered his head until it was nearly submerged, then worked his arms into the pipe as far as they could go, reaching back to where Matt’s legs were bent at a right angle at the knees. He pushed on one leg, trying to turn Matt sideways to the current, as Ober and the others pulled Matt’s arms and chest toward the left. Walker pushed. No gain. He tugged. He pushed again.
At last, Matt’s right leg came free, allowing him to turn. The tow truck driver held the winch steady, and on the count of three, the men pulled. Twice more they tugged, and his body inched upward. His other leg came unshackled. And with one long, last pull, Matt was free.
Bystanders cheered, and firefighters rushed Matt to dry ground. They wrapped him in a blanket, and Ober began emergency medical treatment.
The rescue had taken a grueling 45 minutes. Matt was taken to York Hospital for observation. Apart from lacerations and bruises, and a body temperature of 93 degrees, the strong, young wrestler was okay and was released from the hospital before the night was out.
The incident didn’t scare Matt or slow him down at all. The way he looked at it, a whole community had come together for him. In appreciation for what Walker and Ober and everyone had done, Matt joined the fire department.
His only initial regret was that he’d lost the prized Timberlands he’d saved for. But once again, neighbors came through. Someone had searched downstream, found the boots and hung them on a rail out by the road. Driving by a couple of days later, Rhonda saw them, picked them up and brought them home to Matt.