Posted on 04/25/2008 7:56:09 AM PDT by gura
Dramatic rescue from creek saves four children
By Jeff Raasch and Erika Binegar
and Erika Binegar
jeff.raasch@gazettecommunications.com
erika.binegar@gazettecommunications.com
ANAMOSA — Along the shore of Buffalo Creek, Phillip Horak heard the screams of 2-year-old Tatum McGloghlin inside his car, upside down and almost fully under water.
Just 4 miles from home on a winding gravel road, Horak had spotted a raccoon or a dog, jerked the wheel and was soon filled with regret. The two-door Honda, carrying his girlfriend, Holly Winders, and four toddlers spun off Buffalo Road and down an embankment. It flipped end-over-end, landing on its top in 5-foot-deep water, about a mile and a half north of Anamosa.
"By the time we knew what was going on, we were in the river," said Horak, 27, of Anamosa.
Everyone survived, including Tatum, who spent nearly seven minutes in the water, thanks to a dramatic rescue involving a pizza delivery driver and two Jones County sheriff's deputies.
One of the children, 4-year-old Pierce Horak, was at University Hospitals in Iowa City on Thursday, but is expected to be released today.
"We got very lucky," Horak said. "Somebody was watching over us. I'm very thankful for all of them."
Horak said the four children — ranging in age from 2 to 4 — were in car seats in the back seat when the car went in the creek at about 7:22 p.m. Wednesday. As soon as he realized what was happening, he began unbuckling safety belts and opened his door. He grabbed Trayton McGloghlin, 3, and rushed him to the shore.
Bob Bierer, who works part-time as a pizza delivery man for Paul Revere's Pizza in Anamosa, rounded a sharp right-hand curve and saw the car in the creek.
Bierer, 42, of Anamosa, saw Winders, 27, of Anamosa, standing in the water. She flagged him down, screaming her kids were trapped in the car. He jumped out of his car and began taking off his shoes as he phoned for help.
"I was thinking I've gotta save those kids," he said. "That was the only thing that was going through my mind."
Bierer jumped into the cold water and groped for the switch to yank the driver's seat forward. He pulled out 4-year-old Pierce and Miria Horak, 2, and handed them to their father on the shore.
"When he handed me Pierce, he was all blue and not breathing," Horak said. "I just plugged his nose and breathed into him and got him puking."
Jones County Sheriff's Deputies Brian Eckhardt and C.J. Sullivan arrived around 7:27 p.m. to find Bierer searching inside the car — only its rear tires and part of the back bumper were above water — for the last child, 2-year-old Tatum.
Bierer said he was running out of breath fighting the current. His clothes were sopping wet and full of sand.
Eckhardt, 31, of Oelwein, dove into the murky water four or five times — with Sullivan holding onto his belt and legs. He frantically grasped in all directions for the child. Worried that the child would be entangled in debris, anything he grabbed that didn't feel like a kid went out the door to float away.
And then, as Eckhardt paused to figure out where he'd looked, he heard it: an underwater cry.
"I heard a little voice," Eckhardt said. "It was obvious she was submerged at that point. But she was alive."
He reached over the back seat head rest, into the hatchback and felt the child's back. Her face was against the floor, facing the highest point of the upside-down car.
Eckhardt grabbed the girl with one hand and pulled her through the driver's side door. Tatum spit up a little water. She was very cold but otherwise seemed OK, Eckhardt said.
He and the deputy Sullivan, 42, of Anamosa, put her in a squad car, cranked up the heat and wrapped her in a wool blanket as they waited for an ambulance.
"(She survived) by luck and the grace of God," Eckhardt said. "To be in the water that long and survive is pretty amazing. There wasn't any air in there that I could find, but there must have been an air pocket. I don't know."
On the bank, Phillip Horak said it was "the worst feeling in the world to be able to hear (the children) and not be able to get to them. They all got there so quickly — it was a miracle."
Everyone in the car was taken to Jones Regional Medical Center in Anamosa. They were treated for minor scrapes and released, except for Pierce, who was airlifted to University Hospitals.
Pierce's condition had improved Thursday, and he was moved out of intensive care after watching a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" movie, his father said. Doctors were monitoring any water that might still be in the child's lungs, he added.
Pierce was interviewed by The Gazette and two TV stations from his hospital bed. With scrapes on his face and right arm, he clutched a toy helicopter, a gift from his grandparents, as he recalled the accident.
"I remember when me and Trayton were taken out of the water," he said. "Trayton was crying. I wasn't scared."
Bierer, the pizza delivery man, said Thursday he was just happy the children's parents were standing next to a hospital bed rather than a grave.
Bierer, who also drives for Reinhart Food Services, said he was diagnosed with leukemia on Jan. 7; a month ago he learned the cancer is in remission.
"I have had so many people be so giving to me, with this ordeal I've had to go through. I think it was God's way of allowing me to give something back," he said of his role at Buffalo Creek. "I don't want to be looked upon as a hero. I did what I would hope anybody would do."
Deputy Eckhardt said that if Bierer hadn't happened upon the accident so quickly, at least one life may have been lost.
"I owe that guy pretty much my life," Phillip Horak said. "He saved my children's lives."
Gazette reporter Jennifer Hemmingsen contributed to this story.
God still makes heroes.
That's a real man.
Excellent story
TISSUES PLEASE!
“God still makes heroes.”
You said it all....
Ordinary folks doing extraordinary things. That’s what made (and makes) this country great.
I learned a long time to not try to dodge anything smaller than a cow in the road.
Please, everyone, visualize driving down the road at night and all of a sudden a dog runs in front of your car. HOLD THE WHEEL STEADY! You need to close your eyes and actually visualize this happening. You need to visualize staying on the road.
Give the dog a chance to get out of the way by hitting your brakes but NEVER drive off the road! Do not jerk the wheel or try to avoid the dog.
Yes, odds are that you will hit the dog if you must stay in your lane. You don't want to slam your brakes on and bring the car into a skid or anything stupid. Keep control of the car. By visualizing holding the steering wheel steady, you will be putting a reaction message into your memory that if a dog runs in front of your car, you should respond by holding the steering wheel steady. That is the only message that you want to come up. Hold the wheel steady, grip it tighter but never swerve or jerk the wheel.
Does this method of closing your eyes and visualizing work? It certainly does for me. Try it and pray you won't need it.
bttt for a great story.
May they all be blessed!
Funny you should say this, because while driving I very often have squirrels run in the road and I always tilt my head up so I no longer see where they are. I have an aversion to “seeing” an animal hit, but will not hesitate to slow down but keep straight for the very reasons you listed. Too many car accidents because the driver swerved to avoid a small animal. Better a dead animal on the side of the road then me or mine.
When I was a young boy, I lived by a creek which normally had about a half foot of water in it, but when we got heavy rains it would swell sometimes to 10 feet deep.
I was unfortunate enough to witness a boy drown in it one day. I was there on the banks when they pulled him out, his body lifeless and gray, his mouth choked with grass and weeds. They worked and worked on him until they could do no more. His Father, who was there in the crowd, muttered something about one less mouth to feed and walked away.
To drown is a terrible thing. Thank God these people made it out alive.
I don’t care who gets upset, but I don’t swerve for anything lower on the food chain than me unless it’s cow, horse or moose sized.
Thankfully in all my years of driving I have only hit one dog. It was about 2AM in Kentucky on a 2 lane road. Due to the time and location I made sure that I ran over him with the tires. I was driving a semi tractor trailer so I am confident the animal didn’t suffer.
The weird thing was that just a couple of months prior to that another truck driver told me about the trick of closing my eyes and visualizing a situation. His reasoning for it working was that accidents such as blowing out a front tire or hitting a dog aren’t everyday things in our life. If you have thought about a emergency situation just once, that’s what your memory will bring up first. Then you can determine if that is the proper response for the situation in that time and plac
Terribly tragic story with a wonderful ending. Thanks for posting this story that has restored a bit of faith in humanity in me.
Bob Bierer man’s man and Hero. God bless him for what he did. And I agree with the other posters, run the damn thing over unless it it a threat to come through the wind shield or crush the frame and you as well.
Prayers and blessings...
I used to work in the personal injury/auto accident field, and I can tell you that a very high percentage of one-car accidents (and a number of two-cars) are caused by foolishly swerving to miss an animal in the roadway and losing control.
They told my dad the same thing in driver's school before the Walter Mitty Rally at Road Atlanta.
Don't look if it bothers you, but don't swerve.
Funny story - I used to have an old red Windstar minivan that we nicknamed Christine partly because it was just cranky and busted all the time (never buy a first model year of ANYTHING, folks!) but also because I had about a month-long run of hitting squirrels that was just uncanny. It was getting to the point where I was nailing one a day driving the kids back and forth to school. I was mindful of my own work experience and NEVER swerved, but it was starting to get to the kids (and to me!) So I doused the front bumper with holy water.
Superstition? Yep, sure was. But I never hit another squirrel with that car. We traded it in on a little red Explorer, and I never have hit anything with that one. Knock on wood (more superstition).
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