While Triadelphia firefighters were out rescuing people from raging floodwaters this past weekend, Mother Nature paid a surprise and unwelcome visit to their firehouse.
"The ambulance sits in this bay behind you where the wall of water come (sic) through the wall. (Water) crashed through the wall, went into the back of the ambulance and collapsed the wall; and took out the back wall of the firehouse,” Triadelphia Fire Chief David Patterson told WTRF.
Triadelphia assistant fire chief, who remained at the station, witnessed the floodwaters' fury.
"The moment she was standing in the ambulance bay and she said she heard this awful crack. And she turned around to see a wall of water come through the back wall of the fire house," he told WTOV9.
"She said she watched our big tool box go floating away. We had equipment on the floor, one of our trucks is not here right now, it's down getting repaired, and all the equipment on it was sitting on the floor, and we lost all for that truck."
Two fire trucks and the ambulance were destroyed. Neighboring companies responded to lend a hand before they were even requested, a move that the fire chief said he appreciates.
He'll be seeking a state grant to replace the apparatus and hopefully, repair the station.
Patterson said when it first started raining, he and his firefighters didn't think much about it. That is, until the calls started coming in for people stranded in houses and vehicles.
"I was in the ladder truck, and we got stopped. And I was just talking with one of the deputies and he looked up. And we both looked up and we’re like, uh-oh. And, we see this water coming down and it just started rolling. A wall of water coming toward us.”
They left that immediate area and went to another nearby where frantic people were waiting to be rescued.
"The flooding got so bad. It was moving mobile homes, moving houses. We got houses disappeared here out of town; we got mobile homes. We had some couple mobile homes that had people in them that actually went down the creek. One of which is still missing. We also, like I said, there were some homes taken off their foundations. Some homes relocated to other foundations and a lot of vehicles, a lot of people in vehicles.”
Pattersonn said many of his firefighters lost their homes.
