Apryl Garcia called her husband and told him, “I’ll see you in heaven,” as water rose to her chest in her stalled car on a dark, flooded Faulkner County Road.
She finally kicked out a window of the 1995 Ford Crown Victoria and managed to escape, and she clung to a tree for about three hours until Conway firefighters could rescue her.
And after the dangerous rescue by the Conway Fire Department’s Special
Operations Rescue Team, the boat hit a wall of water and filled the craft, dumping her and three firefighters into the water again — necessitating a second rescue.
“I’ve always thought that was the worse way to die, by drowning,” Garcia said.
Garcia, 34, of Vilonia said she thought of her husband, David, and their 10-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter and prayed while she fought for her life.
She was on her way to work as a manager of Taco Bell in Greenbrier at about 5:15 a.m. April 30. The rains had started the night before, causing historic flooding on roads and in businesses and homes all over the county.
Garcia said she’s made that drive to Greenbrier on the back roads, and she’s never seen it flood. This Sunday morning, she got to the bottom of a hill and around a curve on Wilson Bottoms Road near Arkansas 310, past Clinton Mountain Road, when she got in trouble.
“I was only going probably 20 mph. I didn’t know I was in the water till I was already in it; I had no warning whatsoever,” she said. “I tried to put it in reverse, but the car stalled out.”
She immediately felt panicked and tried to open the car door.
“I ended up ripping the handle off trying to get the door open,” she said. “The car kind of tilted nose down; the water started coming in at my feet first.”
Because the car was nose down and filling with water, Garcia climbed into the back seat and tried to break windows to escape.
She was trapped, and death seemed certain.
Garcia said her cellphone usually doesn’t have a signal at that location, but “I looked down, and my phone said I could make emergency calls only.”
Her husband’s picture popped up on the screen, and she called him. It was 5:21 a.m.
“I was pretty much telling him goodbye,” she said. “I said, ‘I’m dying; I love you. I’m trapped in the car, the water’s filling up, and I can’t get out. Tell the kids I love them; I’ll see you in heaven.’”
Then she dropped her phone, because water had almost filled the car. No matter how hard she kicked the windows, they wouldn’t break.
“I tried one more time to kick through the window, and it just buckled,” she said. “I feel like I had been dragged out of the car by my feet. Somehow I made it to the top. I don’t remember surfacing, but I had to. I felt a tree.”
She said, oddly enough, her Fitbit activity bracelet kept working, and she saw the time — 5:25 a.m.
“The water is strong enough that you can’t just walk through it, but it hadn’t gotten to the worst of it,” she said.
She was in a heavily wooded area.
“I found the tree, and thank God I thought of this and was able to use my strength and wrap around it so the water was pushing me against the tree and helping me hold it,” she said.
A smaller tree, about 3 inches in diameter, was next to it. She said she grabbed it and used it to pull herself up as the water rose.
Garcia said her husband had hung up after her frantic phone call and dialed 911. He knew what time she’d left and knew her route, so he was able to tell emergency personnel the area she was in.
At 6:01, Garcia said, she saw headlights and was relieved; help had arrived.
“I thought, ‘I’m saved,’ but I didn’t realize it was going to take that much longer,” she said.
Deputies from the Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office, MEMS (Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services) ambulance personnel, Enola volunteer firefighters and Vilonia firefighters were on the scene, but she was too far from them, through a thicket of trees, and the water was still rising.
Conway firefighters had been up all night assisting other stranded people and cleaning up flooded businesses.
All the firefighters, except for one, had been on duty since
7 a.m. Saturday. They were within 10 to 15 minutes of ending their shift and going home to rest when the call came in about 6 a.m. that the rescue team was needed.
The men said they knew where to go, thanks to the Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office, which had located her after the initial 911 call, and it took the team five to seven minutes to grab gear and hook up the
Zodiac inflatable boat to a truck at Central Station.
The initial team of firefighters, who are swiftwater experts, arrived about 7:19, Battalion Chief Scott Erwin said.
“She was in a really bad location; it took 45 minutes to an hour to make patient contact,” he said.
Rescue-team members Ty Ledbetter, Randall Green, Justin Martin and Larry Daves, battalion chief, got in the boat, dressed in their dry suits, helmets, gloves and life jackets. Martin put on his fins and sat on the edge of the boat, ready to jump in.
Erwin was on the shore — for the time being — as was Clay Hartness and Nathan Caldwell, other members of the team.
Ledbetter said he immediately thought the worst.
“She was up to her chin in rolling water; I didn’t think she would make it,” Ledbetter said.
Garcia said that at 7 a.m. it started raining harder, and the water kept rising.
“I had to keep climbing the tree,” she said. “Around two hours after I had originally found the tree, my legs started cramping really bad. I kind of straightened my leg out — I was kind of pushing up against the little tree —and it snapped, right into my foot. And I had been hanging on so long, I didn’t have near as much strength. I swung around and was hanging on by my arms and fingertips. I was being pulled very hard by the water. In fact, It took my pants.”
She saw her husband in the distance.
“I thought, ‘I don’t want my husband to watch me die.’ I prayed, ‘Give me more strength, or make this quicker, because I don’t have much more strength,’” she said.
She saw her saviors in the boat.
The firefighters said the ideal situation is to take the boat right up to the person in distress, but the thicket of trees — with rising, rushing water that the firefighters estimated at 30 mph — made that impossible. They were able to get within only 15 feet of her, with the boat tethered to a tree upstream.
Martin jumped in. “She kept saying, ‘I’m about to let go,’” Martin recalled. “I said,
‘Hang on.’”
They were in 10 to 12 feet of water, in the tops of trees, with debris rushing by, Martin said.
Ledbetter held a rope that was attached to Martin, who took a life vest to Garcia.
“Just the scariest part to me was getting her in that life jacket because she had to let go, and I knew she didn’t have anything left,” he said. Martin said she let go one arm at a time to get the life jacket on, and he covered her hand on the tree with his. “I told her, ‘Don’t fight me; you’re going to have to work with me,’” he said.
Garcia said ropes were tied to several trees, and one was around her neck and arm. When it pulled, “I felt like my neck was going to pop off,” she said.
Ledbetter pulled Garcia into the boat, her lips blue from hypothermia; then he pulled in Martin.
Garcia said she landed on her back in the boat, and she could tell there was quite a bit of water in it. “I noticed as they were coming toward me, they were having to scoop out buckets of water, or with their hands. It just kept coming in.”
Martin landed on top of her, she said. When she sat up, Green put his arms underneath her arms and held her.
“If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here today,” Garcia said. “I was kind of pinned under the water, and he (Martin) was still on me from being pulled into the boat.
“I kept telling myself, ‘I haven’t made it this far to only make it this far.’ There’s no way I should have made it out of the car, but I did. I shouldn’t have been able to hang on to the tree that long, but I did.”
Then came the second part of the ordeal.
The boat hit a wall of water — like a wave — which firefighters were trying to avoid by running parallel to it.
Erwin said the front of the boat dropped down, and water got into the boat, dumping out everyone except Daves, who scrambled to the high side and perched on it.
Garcia said she went under the water, “and I kind of went black for a minute.”
When she came to, someone had her “pinned to a tree” with his arms securely around her. That was Green.
Garcia said her strength was gone.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to die.’ He was very honest and said, ‘I don’t, either.’ I have so much respect for him right there, for that honesty. They’re humans; they’re heroes, too. They’re just like you and me, but those are the jobs they chose to do — to put their lives on the line for other people. They’re good people.”
Ledbetter said he thought they had lost her.
“I knew she was dead at that point, and I knew at least one of us was dying,” he said.
Everyone had grabbed a tree, but Martin had a rope that caught him across the chest. Another rope was above him, but he couldn’t move to reach it.
“I was already gassed because I’d been in there with her. The current is directly at my back. My legs are like this,” he said, putting his hands out to show a sitting position. “I thought, ‘This is it; this is where I die.’ I told them to cut the rope. I’m trying to breathe; I can’t catch a breath. Nobody could get to me,” he said, because he was upstream from them.
Finally, the rope around his chest was cut. He grabbed the rope that was attached from the boat to the shore and started working his way toward the bank, as Erwin — who had quickly put on his gear — worked his way toward Martin.
“He was the most threatened at that moment in time,” Erwin said. He grabbed Martin, who said he couldn’t feel his legs.
Erwin went back for Garcia next, then the firefighters. He was attached to the rope, and members of the Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office helped pull them to shore.
Garcia said she was probably in the boat a little after 8 a.m. and was told it was about 8:45 a.m. when she finally got out of the water — more than three hours since her nightmare began.
Emergency personnel treated Martin on the bank, and he and Garcia were placed in the same ambulance until a second ambulance arrived.
“And he didn’t look so good,” Garcia said. “I had more concern for him than myself at the moment.” Martin was taken to Conway Regional Medical Center, where he was treated and released.
Garcia was taken to Baptist Medical Center-Conway, where she spent three days.
“I was born with a heart defect, and [the near-death experience] caused a lot of arrhythmia issues — it exacerbated it, so they had to keep a close eye on it,” she said. “The more emotional I get about it, the more it makes my heart race, and it goes into this crazy rhythm.”
She tried to stay calm when the firefighters who saved her came to see her a couple of days later.
“I was completely overwhelmed; I wasn’t expecting to see them. The fact that they showed up showed they really cared,” she said.
The firefighters said even though the rescue didn’t go perfectly, everyone survived, so it is a success.
“I’m 95 percent happy with how it went,” Erwin said.
The men said that despite their excellent training, no class can re-create the life-and-death situation they were in.
“Nothing can prepare you for that situation,” the 33-year-old Ledbetter said. “That’s the worst flooding I’ve ever seen, and I’ve lived here all my life.”
Daves said it rained 5 1/2 inches in two hours, and one Faulkner County community received 7.85 inches over a 24-hour period, according to the National Weather Service in North Little Rock.
Each of the firefighters commented on Garcia’s strength and her will to live.
“I don’t know I could have done it for almost three hours. That lady is amazing to me,” Erwin said.
“She’s tough as nails,” Ledbetter said.
Garcia, physically recovered from her ordeal, hasn’t lost her sense of humor.
“It’s funny, because I had just been complaining a few weeks ago at work about how I have no upper-body strength,” she said “I’ve been doubling up on the arms days at the gym. I will never call myself weak again.”
Garcia and her husband looked for her car but never found it, but they’ve gotten a van. She said the first few days after she was released to go back to work, it didn’t bother her to drive that route. Now she takes the long way to work if it’s raining even slightly.
“Sometimes when I’m driving through there — not that I don’t belong here — but I think that I shouldn’t be here,” Garcia said. “It’s probably the eeriest feeling. I know that’s not the case — but I think, ‘Am I really here, or am I just imagining this?’
“Except for God himself reaching in and pulling me out, I shouldn’t be here. People say I was lucky, and I say, ‘I’m not lucky; I’m blessed.’ Luck had nothing to do with that.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.