Alamance Rescue Squad reflects on flooding rescues

ALAMANCE COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) — A week after the remnants of Tropical Storm Chantal created emergency flood conditions in Alamance County, rescue workers are taking time to reflect on how they responded.

Alamance Rescue Squad Chief Chris Mauney said for about 12 hours, it was all hands on deck with call after call for help.

This is an agency that recently faced a loss of $125,000 in county funding just last month.

While the Alamance County Commission ultimately kept funding the ARS, what happened last week shows those dollars in action.

“I was in the office doing some paperwork, and the pagers started going off, and I did not see our base until 7 o’clock the next morning,” Mauney said.

Mauney had all 70 of the squad’s members on standby with severe weather possible.

When the first calls came, they loaded the boats up because the call was for a sinking vehicle. ARS is the only heavy rescue in the county, with special equipment for missions like swift water rescues.

“At that point, we’d had close to a dozen calls, and they were starting to pile up,” he said.

Their squad works with other agencies like the Burlington Fire Department and the Mebane Fire Department to try and help as quickly as possible.

They were called dozens of times for help and to some places more than once. They found more people in need when they got there.

“We were turning the vehicle and the boats around, and we heard someone yelling through the woods,” he said. “They said the water was coming up in the house, and they needed to get out of there.

They went into action yet again.

“We launched our boat and went and got a whole family and their pets to safety on the roadway,” Mauney said.

In another incident where they got a man out of a car on a flooded road, they encountered a surprise.

“It was his 50th birthday, and I said, “‘Happy birthday, brother. I’m sorry we had to meet like this,'” Mauney said.

But it’s the work of the ARS that allowed some people to see that next birthday.

After what happened, several local agencies have reached out to them for water readiness training, which is another step to prepare for any future flash flooding.