EAST HAVEN, Conn. -- You can make a firefighter a mayor, but apparently you can't take the firefighter out of Mayor Joseph Maturo Jr.
Maturo, a retired East Haven firefighter, and Chris Palmer, an operator in the Public Works Department, pulled a man from the flooding current in the height of Hurricane Sandy around 2 a.m. Monday.
The Fire Department's military-style truck couldn't make it through the 4-foot flood to make it to the center of town from the beach, so they needed some kind of heavy-duty vehicle, as Hemingway Avenue was completely flooded.
Maturo left with Palmer from the Bradford Manor fire house in a payloader, when Palmer spotted a car, and then a man in the flooding current with just his head above the water. Maturo jumped down from the pay loader and got into the bucket of the truck.
Palmer then drove the vehicle toward the man, and into the flooding waters, and lowered the bucket. The man couldn't get into the bucket, so Maturo jumped out, helped him in and then got back in the bucket with him. Maturo said the man was near the intersection of Silver Sands Road and Coe Avenue.
Fire Chief Douglas Jackson and Chairman of the Town Council Rich Anania had been in the original vehicle with the group that couldn't make it. Palmer drove the vehicle back toward the chief and the man was given medical care, as he was suffering from slight hypothermia and was having trouble breathing, and was given oxygen.
He wasn't safe just yet. The men then had to drive the payloader back again, through the water to the other side of where an ambulance was waiting. Jackson, Anania and Maturo all held the man in the bucket, while Palmer drove the payloader to an ambulance.
Jackson said had they not found the man when they did, the story would have ended much differently.
"I don't think it would have been the same good outcome if they hadn't been there," Jackson said.
Palmer said since the entire series of events happened, he hasn't stopped thinking about the well-being of the man.
"Thank god we were there at the time we were, I get the feeling the guy wouldn't have made it," he said. "Without Joe I don't know what I would have done, I would have put the bucket down to try and scoop him up I guess."
Maturo at first denied the incredulity of the event, and said it's something they are all paid to do.
"I was in the right place at the right time, being a fire fighter never leaves you, just like they say you never stop being a cop -- I'm a firefighter for life," he said.
He said Palmer deserved a lot of the credit for first spotting the man, and then going all the way back to check out the car after the fact.
Maturo and Palmer said the man denied that the car had been his -- and that he was walking from Branford to East Haven. Maturo said the car had been dragged out by the current.
This wasn't the first time Maturo has worked alongside Jackson, either. Before Maturo became disabled and had back surgery, he and Jackson worked in the same crew for a few years.
"They both did a great job. Chris, he's got great eyes and was able to get them there and spot him, and the mayor did great," Douglas said. "It's been years since we worked together on a call, I guess I recruited him back."
Copyright 2012 - New Haven Register, Conn.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
