A woman and two children from Ohio County are recovering after they were rescued early Monday morning.
They were pulled to safety by a Hartford firefighter, after their car was swept away on Combs Bridge Road, northeast of Hartford.
“My dad woke up to go to work. When he started the truck, he could hear the woman screaming,” recalled Grant Parson’s family heard their call for help just after 6:00 AM Monday morning, after their car was swept away by flood waters. He and his parents quickly answered that call.
“My mom runs in to my bedroom saying, ‘There’s a kid in the river.’ She runs in there, she says, ‘Come on. We’ve got to go,'” says Parson. “We got in to the back water, I can hear them yelling in the woods to the left of the road.”
They brought a boat for grant to use to reach one of the kids, who he says swam to a tree. When he couldn’t reach the child by boat, he jumped in
“Got the kid, put him in to the boat, brought him back to the road,” Parson says.
All while neighbors spotted more help on the way.
“I saw the ambulances, and fire and rescue and they were turning on our road and we didn’t know what was going on,” says Shalene Roach, who lives down the street from where the rescue happened.
Parson said the three that were rescued were shocked, scared and cold after their ordeal. The three were taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville.
“That was my first reaction, was just, ‘The kids, are they O.K.?’ You never know what water’s going to do,” Roach says.
Many are glad Parson acted, but he’s glad they’re still o.K.
“People can say whatever, but you really can’t prepare for that. You just got to jump in and do what you got to do,” he says.
Parson’s spent four years with Hartford Fire Department and he says it’s the first time he’s ever had to do that type of rescue.
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(This article was originally published February 27, 2018)
