Battalion Chief Rusty Singleton was first to hear the screams: “Jesus, save me! Jesus, save me!”
Master Firefighter Justin Ingle battled thick briars and brambles, followed her screams and found her.
Firefighter Ethan Tompkins was just behind Ingle with a rope.
Engine 18 Capt. Chris McReynolds came next to the creek’s bank to assist in this life-saving rescue.
On the evening of Monday, August 30, 2021, just past 8 p.m., these four Knoxville Fire Department professionals from Station 18 on Weisgarber Road worked as a team to save a young woman’s life. Had Ingle not waded into the deep creek immediately when he finally spotted her, this operation could easily have been a recovery versus a life saved.
On that Monday, Knoxville was pounded with thunderstorms and steady downpours from the remnants of Hurricane Ida. Many streets flooded. That 200 block of Papermill Drive below McKay’s Books is a prime area for flooding. On this evening it was truly flooded.
What looks like a ditch on Papermill next to I-40 is really a small creek on a normal day. On major rain days, it can and has before become a roaring, large creek. This young woman, an Uber driver, was driving west on Papermill when she saw the flooded roadway. When she tried to turn around, her small Honda was sucked into the fast-current water and creek. Downstream she went with the water that was estimated to be 15 to 20 feet deep in places. Bystanders saw it happen.
KFD received the alarm for “a vehicle trapped in fast-moving floodwaters” just after 8 p.m.
What happened next, in the words of the burly Capt. McReynolds, a 25-year KFD veteran, was “truly a miracle. There is no doubt in my mind that God had a hand in this. No other explanation.”
Here are the facts that led to his conclusion:
Chief Singleton had been on a call and was sitting under the I-40 overpass over Weisgarber, returning to the station. When the call came in, he turned right onto Papermill and drove to a spot near McKay’s and stopped just short of the flooded roadway. He rolled his window down. That’s when he heard the repeated screams: “Jesus save me!”
And Engine 18 – with Ingle driving, McReynolds in charge and Tompkins in the back – was coming toward Singleton headed east down Papermill from a prior call near the Papermill/Kingston Pike intersection. Ingle drove through the water to Singleton’s vehicle.
“The chief was right there and we were really close on Papermill coming that way,” Ingle said. “It’s beyond coincidence. Had we been in the station when the call came in, I think things would be different. I don’t think she would have survived. We were in the right place at the right time, and like captain said, that’s beyond coincidence.”
Her car, with her inside, was carried down the creek.
Justin Ingle waded into the creek, grabbed the woman and held on while the team pulled them to safety.
Ingle, 40, a fourth generation KFD firefighter, wearing his fire pants, boots, a raincoat and helmet, headed for the trees and toward her constant screams. “I walked around to where the overgrowth starts and it was so thick I could not see through the trees and limbs and bushes,” he said. “I just started clawing my way through and made a hole. No other way. We were racing time. I lost my helmet in there. As I got deeper into the woods she was screaming and I couldn’t see her. I thought maybe I’d find her on the top of the car.”
Ingle, joined by Tompkins, who was carrying a rope, finally came to a steep creek bank and that’s when he saw her, clinging precariously to a small tree in the middle of the stream, her face facing upstream toward the water. Her body was pushed to the surface by the current. Every time she screamed, she was swallowing water. He still could not see her car.
Ingle is not trained as a swiftwater rescue technician. But he didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the rope and into the current and deep water he went, across the creek to her. With water filling the heavy fire boots and the raincoat’s pockets, he pulled himself to a tree. “I got the rope on her and reached down in her jacket to grab her and I swung out holding her and the guys pulled us out,” Ingle said.
“She was holding on by a thread and later on said she was about to give up and let go of the tree, that she was exhausted and couldn’t hold on any longer, and that’s when she saw the flashing red lights on our engine and that kept her holding on.”
This is a good place to explain that the young woman, maybe 23, declined to be interviewed and identified by the media. That is a right we respect. But what Ingle and the team did saved her life and altered the history of her and her family.
When something in the water snagged her car, she managed to get out and the current took her downstream. “She said she was trying to grab onto anything to stop herself. She grabbed handfuls of grass on the bank but that didn’t work and she finally found a tree to grab that was in the middle of the stream,” Ingle explained. “Had she not gotten out of the car she’d be dead.”
As storm waters receded, the woman’s car was found, after having been submerged and floating downstream.
Her car was finally found. The current had pushed the car’s rear end up near the surface and the water was rushing over it as it does a rock in a stream. Ingle and the others finally saw the tail lights in the water.
She was so exhausted she could not answer their questions. “She kept repeating her mom’s cellphone number over and over and was soaking wet and in shock. She was asking who was going to call her mother,” Chief Singleton said. “She was throwing up water and collapsed on the bank. We got her into a Stokes basket and the four of us carried her to the roadway.”
Just after they had her on the bank her car came loose from what had snagged it and floated on down the creek and into the deeper water.
She was taken to the University of Tennessee emergency room and had no injuries.
Here’s one more coincidence in this story. Two days later Chief Singleton was driving by the scene and saw a man in the McKay’s parking lot walking toward the woods and creek. He turned in and asked the man if he was the father of the woman they saved. He was and said his daughter was sitting in his car. Singleton called the station and the Engine 18 team joined in the reunion. And she agreed to have her picture made with them in front of the engine.
“It was so cool to see her,” Ingle said. “We usually never see them again – the people we help and save. It was a great feeling.”
Here is the what Chief Singleton wrote in his narrative conclusion of the incident: “… She was so gracious and happy to meet us. She knew so many things had to go right for her. The location of fire apparatus in the area and the quick arrival time on scene. Along with the quick actions of the firefighters that saved her life. She is a very private person. Her father told me she did not like to be in the limelight or have a lot of attention. Her story from the time she entered the water to the end is a remarkable story. We are honored to be a part of her continuing happy story.”
As we sat at Station 18 this past Friday this team of KFD heroes considered themselves as reluctant heroes. As the chief said, “We just happened to be on shift that day and in the right place at the right time.” If nothing else, these guys are humble to a fault.
Yep. Four heroes. Then McReynolds pointed at Ingle and chimed in. “We were there, true, but Jingle there (Ingle’s nickname) is the real hero in all of this. He went into the water and saved her life. He did what had to be done.”
Tom King has served at newspapers in Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and California and was the editor of two newspapers. Suggest future stories at tking535@gmail.com or call him at 865-659-3562.