A REPORTER FINDS, IN A TIME OF DESPERATION, THAT "KNIGHTS OF THE HIGHWAY" STILL EXIST.
By Challis McDonough
This is the story of a hero. My hero, the first of many people who helped me get through a very bad storm.
I'm a reporter for the Voice of America, a government-owned radio station that broadcasts around the world in 54 languages. Every hurricane season, I've shaken my head at the TV reporters who stand out there on the beach as some storm or another lashes the coast with 100-mile-an-hour winds and torrential rains. I thought they should come in out of the rain.
But when Hurricane Floyd headed for the Carolinas instead of Florida, as we'd expected, my editors asked me to cover the storm. Well, I hopped right in the car and headed south.
I've been through hurricanes before - I lived directly in the path of Hurricane Fran when she plowed through North Carolina in 1996, one of the worst storms to hit the state in recent memory - and I thought I knew what I was getting into. I didn't.
...
It is approximately four in the morning, I am in a rental car, driving south on Interstate 95, right into the oncoming storm. I stop and evaluate the winds, note that I have not seen many tree branches down, and decide that this storm is not as bad as Fran, at least not yet. I think I have a little more time before it becomes too dangerous to drive.
I am wrong on both counts.
The storm is getting worse, and quickly. There is a tremendous amount of rain, more than I have ever seen. I would like very much to stop somewhere for the night, but all the hotels at the last exit were full, so I am still driving, looking for a safe place to stay.
I don't even make it to the next exit.
The highway is covered with water, completely covered. Several cars and trucks have stopped and the drivers are weighing their options: try to get through it, or turn around? In the dark and rain, it is hard to tell how deep the water is, or how much of the road is under it.
Two trucks plow on ahead. They make it. Another car tries. It makes it. I try. I don't make it.
It happens like this: The water gets deeper and deeper until my headlights are all but submerged. I decide it might be best to back up, but at almost that exact moment, I feel the car's tires leave the road. The engine stalls. The car is floating, drifting off the highway and into the median. The car spins, bumps into a tree, keeps floating.
This all seems to happen very slowly. It almost certainly takes no more than a minute for the car to come to a rest, but it seems like half an hour. As I am drifting, I find myself thinking: This doesn't really happen. This happens on the Weather Channel, but it doesn't happen to me.
Finally, the car hits some kind of solid ground and comes to rest, slightly nose-down, more than 200 yards from where I started. I have spun more than 360 degrees, so I am facing the southbound lanes of the highway again. The entire hood of the car is under water. There is a popping sound, and water begins pouring into the footwells. The car is filling up, fast.
I try to open the door, but it won't budge. At this point, instinct takes over. For some reason a voice in my head is saying to roll down the window and climb out, so that's what I do. On the way out the window, I grab my purse, which has my cell phone in it. I am sitting in the window with one leg in the car and the other outside as I dial 911, as I beg the dispatcher to send someone to help me.
She asks me where I am, and I tell her that I am on I-95 South. I can see the exit sign not 50 yards from me: Exit 119A, 264 West. She stays on the phone with me as I climb onto the roof of the car. We establish that the car seems to have grounded itself into something like stability, so I don't think I'm about to be washed any further away. She tells me a squad is on its way, they will get here as soon as they can. There is nothing more she can do to help me. She hangs up.
I make one more call, to the VOA office in Washington, before the phone shorts out. I explain to the overnight editor what has happened, where I am, that I have already called the rescue squad, that I just thought he should know what is going on. He asks me if I am in danger. This is the only time I really lose my cool: I shout, "Did you hear me? I am on top of my car, surrounded by water. Yes I am in danger!" Then I calm down and tell him I am not going to die, I am not in imminent danger, but I would like to get off the roof of the car sometime soon, so maybe he should call the authorities and remind them that I am still out here. I feel bad for yelling at him.
Then the phone is dead.
The wind gets stronger. The rain stings. I am wearing a completely useless jacket and keep pulling the hood down over my eyes, trying to protect them from the rain. I am getting colder and wetter by the second. There is nothing but water in every direction, as far as I can see.
Cars and trucks are passing by in the very lanes in which I'd been driving just moments before. I scream into the wind and rain for somebody to stop, somebody please help me. Nobody stops. I'm 50 yards off the road. It's dark. Maybe nobody sees me. I dig into my purse for a flashlight. I brought it along thinking I might need it when the storm knocked out the electricity, never imagining I'd need to flag down a passing truck driver as I sat, shivering and scared, on the roof of my car.
But here I am, clinging to the roof as the storm grows more violent. I shine the tiny flashlight beam toward every passing car and truck. One goes by, two, three. Nobody stops.
I am trying not to think that I could die out here, all alone. The car could be washed out from under me and nobody would find me until it's too late. I am wishing I had called my mother before the phone went dead. I am waving the little flashlight frantically. Still, nobody stops...and then somebody does.
He is driving an unmarked 18-wheeler. Maybe it is white or yellow. I can't tell. He stops directly across from me and hops out. He has a very bright flashlight. He shouts over the wind and the rain, asking if I am hurt, asking if there is anyone else in the car.
The he wades into the water. He is trying to get to me. He tells me it's not too deep, and the current's not too strong. He thinks I can wade back to the road, so I slide off the roof of the car. No such luck. The water starts out only waist-deep on both edges, but the bottom drops away sharply somewhere in between, and neither of us can get through it.
So he sits there with his truck, shining his flashlight on me and every once in a while shouting something I can't quite hear over the storm.
I say over and over again, not loud enough for him to hear: Please don't leave me here, I need someone to know I'm here. He doesn't leave.
I am on top of that car for an hour and a half before the rescue squad drags me - shivering, scared, colder and wetter than I have ever been - off to dry ground, or at least to less flooded ground. The trucker, my hero, is there the whole time.
When the EMTs arrive, one ties himself off to the ambulance, then tries to wade out the way the truck driver did. He almost goes under; the water is over his head. He turns back and asks me if the other side of the highway is closer to me. It is. The ambulance drives off, then comes back 10 minutes later, driving south in the northbound lanes. The EMT ties himself off again, then wades out to me. The water is only waist-deep the whole way. I say jeez, if I'd known it was that shallow I would have left hours ago. He takes my suitcase and hands me the rope, then we wade back to the ambulance.
Somewhere along the way, the truck has disappeared, and my hero with it. I never got to thank him.
...
I have told this story many times now. I've told it to friends and colleagues and family members. I told it on the air to the entire VOA audience; people in India and Africa and China have heard about the mystery truck driver who stayed with me until help arrived. I'm telling this story again now in the hopes that he might see it himself and know how grateful I am, or that someone who reads this magazine will know who he is and tell him.
I am also writing this because although that mystery driver is my hero, I know he's not the only one out there. Lots of drivers have stopped to help lots of people like me. I am telling this story to thank them, too.
So this is for the man who stopped and stayed there with me when things looked darkest. I never got to tell him this:
You couldn't wade out to my car, but you helped me more than you can ever know. After the storm, I found out that dozens of people died on North Carolina's flooded roads in circumstances not too different from mine. Your presence kept me from panicking, kept me calm, helped me keep my head so I could survive. Just knowing that someone was there, and knowing that someone knew I was there, helped me get through that terrifying hour and a half. I don't think I could have done it without you.
I don't know your name, or where you came from, or what made you stop to help me. I did not ever get a chance to thank you in person. That's why I've told this story every time I've gotten a chance, and that's why I'm telling it now.
Mr. Truck Driver, I am forever in your debt. Whoever you are, thank you.