BEDFORD COUNTY, Va. (WFXR) — On Saturday, three Appalachian Power linemen instantly became heroes.
While on a job in Thaxton, Jeff Dotson, Tyler Blair, and Cameron Lacy came across severe flooding blocking a bridge they needed to cross to reach the work site.
“Once I got down there, I realized the bridge was impassable,” said Dotson, the crew supervisor. “There was water flowing over the top of it, I didn’t even know where the bridge was at.”
After determining the bridge was unsafe, the three West Virginia-based crew members were just moments away from turning around and leaving the site until it was safe to cross.
“We were probably about 30 seconds from leaving the location and there was a gentleman that came up out of the driveway in a Jeep,” said Dotson.
After a brief conversation with Dotson, the man in the Jeep, turned to cross the bridge again.
That was when trouble struck.
“I don’t know if the bridge washed out in the meantime or if he just missed the bridge but the Jeep ended up flipping over upside down in the creek and it was probably like that for 10 to 15 seconds,” said Dotson.
The car floated about 300 feet down the stream before getting lodged between two trees.
As the linemen were trying to figure out what to do next, the man got out of the car.
“Immediately when he stepped out of the Jeep, he submerged,” said Dotson. “He had an orange toboggan on and that’s all we saw floating down the stream.”
The man, who is in his 70s, floated another 50 feet down the stream before grabbing onto a tree for support.
That was when Lacy jumped into the water holding one end of a rope that his two crewmates had the other end of.
“I looked at him and said, ‘buddy, listen, you’ve got to hold your breath,'” said Lacy, a line mechanic from Logan, West Virginia. “‘This is going to hurt but you’ve got to hold your breath, hold onto this rope, and I’ll get you out.”
The men said the temperature outside was around 32 degrees at the time everything happened and Lacy said the water was so cold it took his breath away as soon as he entered the water.
“That was a very scary moment for all of us,” said Blair. “That’s for sure.”
The three said that from start to finish, everything happened within about 20 minutes.
“They train us for certain situations,” said Dotson. “Obviously a water rescue isn’t one of them. But we had enough knowledge through the training that we’ve received that we came up with a pretty good plan pretty quickly to get that man back to safety.”
The three men were taken to the hospital and treated for hypothermia, but all three were back at work in West Virginia by Sunday.
They said they have spoken with a family member of the man they saved, who is supposed to make a full recovery.