Officials, volunteers join for Zalma rescue

ZALMA, Mo. — Richard Myers, like many firefighters, shrugs off the suggestion that he and other Zalma firefighters were among Tuesday's heroes.

"We're not heroes. We're just a community of people who help each other," said Myers, a computer programmer for Schaefer Electrical Enclosures Inc. of Advance, Mo. A volunteer firefighter for 20 years and assistant chief of Zalma's all-volunteer fire department, he was one of 14 who responded to Tuesday's calls. He coordinated communications between his department, the sheriff's department and state conservation and water patrol officials as well as civilians who responded by volunteering after hearing on police scanners the efforts to rescue a Bollinger County community threatened by a flash flood.

The Castor River rose so quickly police didn't have time to warn residents of April Hills.

As darkness fell Tuesday, Crystal Carnahan used her cell phone to call for help. Her dad, sister, brother and nephew were watching water move up the steps to their mobile home. Her father had already taken the family to a neighbor's house on higher ground, but even that was threatened.

Parts of Bollinger County Road 517 had already disappeared under a flash flood.

Meanwhile, Brett Plautz and Glenn Winemiller, April Hills neighbors who'd traveled to Iowa to visit Plautz's critically ill father, began getting frantic phone calls from their girlfriends and Winemiller's sister and her three children. Winemiller's girlfriend was caring for her 18-month-old granddaughter. The families were staying in April Hills to avoid possible flooding in Benton, where they live. But rainwater poured down so hard, Plautz and Winemiller's homes shook. The women, Plautz said, feared the buildings would be swept away.

In fact, Winemiller's 32-foot recreational camper floated off its foundation, a four-and-a-half foot stack of bricks, traveled two pastures away and landed on some tree branches but appears otherwise undamaged, he said Thursday.

Winemiller also called the sheriff's department.

"As swift as the water was, we couldn't get boats across to help them," Myers said. Instead, they circled around to the back of April Hills, using conservation trucks and four-wheel all-terrain vehicles. At the edge of a 150-foot slope too steep for the vehicles, rescuers began walking. Myers said.

The calm attitude of the adults helped keep the children calm and made the rescue effort move along more smoothly, he said. Not all was perfect. A state pickup truck's window was smashed by a tree branch; another truck had transmission problems brought on by the struggle to get over muddy terrain.

After helping get the smaller children to safety, Neill Carnahan's son, Ralph, 19, refused to join the party so he could look after the family's pets, particularly his dog, Cain. He was one of three who remained on the hillside. He was evacuated Thursday afternoon.

Brian Ely, 9, curled his toes up inside his sneakers to keep them from being sucked as the group slogged through mud, back up the hill, which he said felt like it was "two or three miles long." He was one of more than a dozen children evacuated.

Once up the hill, small groups were ferried by ATV to the pickup trucks and taken to Berrong Church, where a bus waited to carry the 29 residents to a shelter being set up by members of Zalma General Baptist Church's congregation.

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In the heart of Zalma, Brad Barrett and his daughter, Jennifer Sneed, were in no danger during the flooding, but the store they've run for four years, Lemons Gas & Groceries, was immersed. On Thursday, Sneed sat on the floor, wiping down empty shelves so they could be restocked.

Most of the inventory was kept safe when the Castor River waters rose inside the shop, Barrett said, but the water destroyed a tank with 600 gallons of gasoline.

"That hurts," he said, eyeing a machine pumping the last of five feet of water from the lower portion of the two-level shop. "The rest of it, we'll get cleaned up."

Family friend Sara Corbin, unable to get to her job at Cape Radiology in Cape Girardeau, used her digital camera to document flood damage. She, like Barrett's sister, Andrea Barrett and her son, Ethan, 6, helped clean the store, too.

"I couldn't have done this without the help from everybody," Brad Barrett said. "I've been up for three days. It's been a long week."

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127