Ga. Firefighters Remember Engine Lost to Flood

Sept. 16, 2010
POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. -- It was one of the most memorable images of metro-Atlanta's historic flood of 2009. CBS Atlanta's Sky Eye captured footage of a burning home in Powder Springs. The house was surrounded by floodwater, and a nearby fire truck sat submerged. Those images showed how quickly floodwater rose after six days of rain fell across northern Georgia. On Wednesday, Cobb County firefighters recalled the morning nearly one year ago when the engine was destroyed.

POWDER SPRINGS, Ga. --

It was one of the most memorable images of metro-Atlanta's historic flood of 2009. CBS Atlanta's Sky Eye captured footage of a burning home in Powder Springs. The house was surrounded by floodwater, and a nearby fire truck sat submerged.

Those images showed how quickly floodwater rose after six days of rain fell across northern Georgia.

On Wednesday, Cobb County firefighters recalled the morning nearly one year ago when the engine was destroyed.

Engineer Lee Mathews said he and his colleagues arrived on Five Oaks Court to find floodwater lapping onto the cul-de-sac. “We just started doing our job attacking the fire,” he said.

The occupants had escaped the home, firefighters said.

Within minutes, the water had risen over the wheel well of the fire truck, but they kept fighting the fire, thinking the water certainly wouldn’t get higher, Mathews said.

Kenneth Hankinson has since retired from the Cobb County Fire Department. He was in charge of the scene that morning. “We were literally wading out in waist-deep water to put water on the fire,” he said.

By the time they tried to move the truck, it was too late, said Mathews. “We realized instead of being rescuers, we all of the sudden, we’re looking like victims,” he said.

So they decided to stop fighting the house fire and switch to flood rescue mode. “At this point, we realized that we needed to force an evacuation whether people wanted to leave their houses or not,” said Hankinson.

Fire station No. 6 in Powder Springs now uses a different fire engine. The engine it lost during the flood is being replaced at a cost of about $400,000, firefighters said.

“This will be something that for the rest of my career, I’ll never forget,” said Mathews. “Let alone, my fire family will let me forget, since it was my engine that became waterlogged.”

The home firefighters initially tried to save has since been torn down. Neighbors said the homeowners had no flood insurance and have decided not to rebuild.

Efforts to reach the homeowner were unsuccessful.

Copyright 2010 by cbsatlanta.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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