Howllo Fellow Basset Hound and scary story with a good ending lovers….OMD!
Residents…..Be safe and never try to cross any water that appears to be rushing…..
Story date: June 28, 2011
Stylist, dog swept down creek during flash flood
By Adam Sweeney
After several weeks of scorching high summer temperatures and no rain, it would be easy for the general public to forget about the days of heavy rain in May. Local hair stylist Cathy Jeffery, however, learned a lesson about flash floods that will likely require more than a month of summer heat to erase.
On May 23, Cathy Jeffery left work to drive to meet her husband at the couple’s cabin near Fort Douglass and Haw Creek Falls in Johnson County. Her husband, Kenneth, had been working on a deck at the cabin and had been there for about two weeks.
After work, Cathy loaded her basset hound, Gracie, into her kennel and placed the dog in the back of her Ford Explorer. She stopped at Dover Supermarket for some groceries, then headed for the cabin.
Kenneth had told her to honk when she arrived at a creek crossing about a quarter of a mile from the cabin if she felt she couldn’t safely cross.
“I honked for 30 minutes,” Cathy said. “What I should have done was turn around and gone home. But I had just driven an hour, and I was kind of stubborn about it. I had crossed that creek so many times, I thought ‘Ah, it’ll be OK.’”
As soon as Cathy pulled the Explorer into the creek, the vehicle began filling with water.
“It gets to my lap and my window won’t come down,” she said. “I’m panicking. Who wouldn’t? I don’t know if there’s an emergency part of the car that says ‘All windows go down now. We’re filling up with water.’ or if it was just finally I got it to go down. But it’s a very scary feeling to think you’re going to drown. Within seconds, you’re panicking.” Eventually the window lowered, and Cathy was able to crawl from the vehicle. Then she remembered Gracie. “It was almost 8 p.m. It was kind of getting dark. The water is freezing cold. I’m in a long black dress, which turned into a sail underneath the water. It’s getting hung up in limbs and stuff. I climb out of the window and I’m panicking because the car is floating and, ‘Oh my gosh, my dog’s still in it.’” With water sweeping the vehicle downstream, Cathy waited for an opportunity to get to the back where Gracie was. “We hit a tree and the car went sideways,” Cathy said. “It started going nose down first because the window was down. It enabled me to open the hatch in the back of the Explorer. I saw the cage filling up with water. She’s a basset hound with short little legs. The water is taking me so I’m holding on. I got her out and we just rushed on with the water. I’m holding her by the neck. I’m unable to hold myself and her up so we kept getting pulled under. My shoes go, my jewelry is going. It’s just crazy how fast it happened.”
After grabbing onto a limb, she started looking for a way to get up the side of the creek bank. She held herself and Gracie against the limb, bracing against the strong current. “It was by the grace of God that I had the strength to not just let her go — she was heavy. I couldn’t touch the bottom. Superwoman strength comes over you. It’s all adrenaline and crazy. I get her to where she can get up the bank. I thought if she can make it, I can too. It’s a negotiation between yourself and your strength and your stamina and your panic. It was just surreal. Your car’s under the water. The lights were on. I was thinking ‘Oh my gosh. I just messed up.’” Though she wasn’t far from the cabin, Cathy had no way to alert her husband. A short time later, though, she saw headlights and knew he was on the way to look for her. With rain pouring down, the couple had to scream to hear each other. “He yelled ‘Are you stuck?’ And I say ‘No.’ Because I wasn’t stuck,” Cathy said. “I’m thinking he could tell my car was gone, but he couldn’t see it. It was quite a bit down. Because I was screaming he could hear me. He couldn’t see me. And of course it started pouring down rain — storming, lightning and thunder.”
Kenneth communicated to Cathy that he was going around the other way, which is through Deer, and would take about an hour. But a tree had felled, blocking that path as well. He tried to cut the tree with a chainsaw to no avail.
Cathy detailed what happened next.
“He came back to the crossing,” Cathy said. “He’s trying to cross, and I’m watching his flashlight bob, and I’m thinking I’m going to have to sit there and watch him drown trying to save me, which is ridiculous. Short of a helicopter, he did everything he could to save me.” After seeing he could not safely cross, Kenneth told Cathy she would have to spend the night in the woods. “Then it hit me that I was there for the night,” Cathy said. “I was so relieved to not be injured and to survive that treacherous water that I was OK with that. What else are you going to do? Cry about it? You just have to suck it up and try to exist.” With visibility low in the dark and rain, Cathy felt around for a soft place to stay for the night. The long black dress, which she considered discarding while in the creek because it was snagging on limbs underwater, became her tent for the night. “Gracie was so precious to snuggle against me,” Cathy said. “She knew we needed each other. We saved each other. Her warmth and mine put together were much better than just my own. I was breathing into the dress to try to at least get some kind of heat. It just poured down rain.” Leaning against a tree in the dark, holding Gracie, Cathy had several visitors in the night. “Sitting in the black dark with the only light coming from occasional lightning, I saw all kinds of stuff that I normally would have been afraid of, like a raccoon coming up with its beady little glow-in-the-dark eyes,” she said. “It’s almost like I had a film over my eyes and my mind. I guess I was in shock. I almost don’t remember the worst of it because I’ve almost blocked it out.” Though she admittedly is not a morning person, after a sleepless night in the rain, Cathy decided to get moving as soon as the sun came up. “I was ready to get out of that joint,” Cathy said. “I had no shoes. I walked on a hard rock, gravel road to get closer to where my husband would be driving by. … I really could not feel sorry for myself because I would have stopped. My feet were hurting so bad. It was nice to be on that hot concrete and to be so warm. Because everything was so muggy and wet and dark in the woods.” After a while a truck with three men passed by and asked if they could help.
“They must have been scared to death, because here comes this lake-looking woman coming up from the creek wearing a dress that’s all ripped up and carrying a dog. The first person I see is going to get the emotional dumping,” Cathy said. After hearing her story, the men decided to take her to an abandoned church to wait for her husband. Cathy then realized Kenneth wouldn’t pass that church and had the men turn around. After the truck changed direction, they saw Kenneth driving up the road.
“I’ve never been so happy to see him. He had a fresh change of clothes for me and a sandwich that he gave to my dog. That was sweet,” Cathy said. Later on, the Jeffreys had a tow truck remove the Explorer, which was totaled, from the creek. The vehicle was swept 150 yards from the crossing.
“It took the wrecker service five hours to get it out,” Cathy said. “The driver said, ‘Lady, I don’t know how you’re alive.’” Cathy said the incident will not keep her from visiting the cabin again, though she was alarmed at the sight of water rushing toward the all-terrain vehicle she was riding in on her next trip across the creek. “I’m just going to be a lot smarter,” Cathy said. “I’ll get out and walk if I have to. My husband crossed it two hours before I did and it raised so much more in that time that he couldn’t cross it. It wasn’t like I was just venturing out and daring to try it. I was following his lead. And I certainly honked for him but he couldn’t hear it. I was just so grateful he came back.”
Cathy said many people have told her they would have let the dog go and saved themselves.
“I couldn’t touch and with the current — a lot of people have said I was fortunate the current didn’t suck me underneath the car,” Cathy said. “I just knew as fast as it was filling up, that my dog was in there and I couldn’t handle that. I could not have handled living and her not. I couldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t be proud of this survival story if I hadn’t saved her. It was like my child was in the back of the car. Anything that’s living and breathing. I can’t handle the thought of something suffocating.”
Cathy said the experience has given her a different outlook on life. “I decided I would take a little more time to appreciate things in life,” she said. “I don’t consider myself a very vain person, but all women are. Some men are, too. I understand what’s important in life now versus how good your hair looks today. I felt like I was that way anyway, but it really feels that way now. Material things are replaceable. Your life is not.”
End of article……..
Cathy and Gracie I am so glad you both are safe. You have taught me a big lesson. Don’t risk it. I am a huge safety person and I rarely if ever takes risks. Stay safe residents…..Stay safe…….
More loving good endings later…..Cat, Chaps and Emma
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