As Maddie McRae struggled to reach the shore after an icy plunge, she had only one thought: "I Have to Save My Family--Now."
Like most Oregonians, Stephanie McRae was used to driving in foul weather.
Although rain still pelted the windshield of her SUV, the worst of the day's storm seemed to have passed as she drove her 11-year-old daughter, Maddison, home from a church youth-group at 8:30 p.m.
Maddie rode up front, while two toddlers the McRaes are fostering sat strapped into their car seats in back. McRae, 39, turned her blue Ford Expedition onto South Prairie Road, where the family lives in rural Tillamook. Rounding a curve to cross over Fawcett Creek, McRae confronted a terrifying sight: The road just ahead had caved in and washed away. She slammed on the brakes. The SUV skidded into the gaping hole, plunged into the flooded culvert some 20 feet below, and was flushed into the creek, which the storm had turned into a raging river 100 feet wide. Rocks and downed tree branches smashed into the Ford, which flipped upside down. The pressure blew out the windows.
No one was hurt, but there was no way to escape either. The SUV was being swept toward the Tillamook River, barely a quarter mile away. McRae screamed helplessly into the night for her husband, Dan, and prayed aloud with Maddie: "Please, God, please, help us!"
"I actually didn't think any of us would get out," McRae recalls. The vehicle, submerged and filling with water, came to a stop when it lodged at an angle in a logjam.
It was Maddie who took control. Pushing her way out the shattered back cargo window, the slight but athletic preteen scrambled on top of the SUV, which had righted itself, and yelled to her mother to hoist up the younger children. Soon all four were huddled on top of the car's battered roof, trying to hold on as the water swept over them, rising higher and higher. McRae clutched the two-year-old to her chest while holding the three-year-old on her leg and wrapping an arm around him. Both children were so quiet that McRae wondered if they were all right.
"Mom, I have to go get help," Maddie cried.
McRae realized it was their only hope. If she tried to go herself, she knew, Maddie wouldn't be able to hold on to the two toddlers, and all three children might drown. But Maddie was still recovering from foot surgery and had been out of a cast for only a week. How was she going to manage? They were stranded in the middle of the swelling torrent in complete darkness, more than 25 feet from the creek bank.
McRae looked at her small, determined daughter. "I'm thinking, This is the last chance I may get to talk to her. What do I need to tell her?" she recalls. "I love you!" she shouted over the roaring water. "I'm proud of you. Be careful!"
"I know I can do it," Maddie replied. The 95-pound sixth grader grabbed a thin, mossy branch hanging over the SUV and began to shinny across the creek. Reaching the bank, she jumped into "a whole bunch of prickly bushes," then took off running. "I was in, like, power mode," she recalls.
With the cold water now creeping up to her chest and her arms growing numb around the two toddlers, McRae could see her daughter's silhouette as she darted up the hill toward the nearest neighbor's back pasture. Suddenly she heard Maddie scream.
"I ran into an electric fence," Maddie recalls. "It really hurt." Barefoot and soaking wet, she tried to climb it four or five times, thrown back each time by a shock meant to contain horses. Finally she found a cold spot near the gate and got over. McRae saw a porch light go on at the top of the hill.
Inside, the neighbors immediately called 911 and were told that emergency dispatch had already received word about trouble at Fawcett Creek: Rescuers were making their way from the collapsed bridge toward another stranded vehicle. Maddie joined the neighbors as they ran to the creek, then helped point out where her mother was trapped. As Tillamook firefighters' flashlights swept across the water, they landed on a partially submerged car farther downriver. "That's not my family!" Maddie cried.
"I'm here," McRae's voice called from across the creek. "You have to get us!"
While the Coast Guard's swift-water rescue team carried the other family out, Fire Capt. Chuck Spittles struggled to find a way to get to McRae. He and his crew dragged a 35-foot extension ladder from one of their trucks to the creek bank and maneuvered it as close to the SUV as they could get-about ten feet above McRae. The lightest firefighter, Lt. Aaron Burris, crawled down the makeshift gangplank with a lifeline. McRae cinched it to the three-year-old so that Burris could hoist the toddler up and hand him to another rescuer at the end of the ladder. They repeated the drill with the two-year-old.
Finally, McRae grabbed the ladder and was hoisted up. Once back on land, her numb legs gave out. More than an hour had passed since the ordeal began.
Maddie raced into her mother's arms. "She hugged me for, like, five minutes," Maddie remembers. McRae and the two children were treated for hypothermia at a local hospital and sent home that night.
Revisiting the accident site in daylight, Spittles was dumbfounded. The only branch that Maddie could possibly have grasped was maybe four inches in diameter—too flimsy to have supported her. "I still don't know how she got off that rig," he marvels.
Maddie and her mother went back to Fawcett Creek before the SUV was hauled out and were also unable to figure out how Maddie had made it across. Not that they dwell on it. Maddie accepted an award for her heroism, but she's happier just getting back to her sports teams and her youth group. But her mother considers the rescue-like her daughter-"nothing short of a miracle."
译文:
11岁的孩子洪水逃生救家人
当玛迪•麦克蕾跳入冰冷的洪水奋力到达岸边时，心里只有一个念头:“我必须救出我的家人。”
作者： 塔玛•拉琼斯
像许多俄勒冈州人一样，斯蒂芬尼•麦克蕾习惯了在恶劣的天气里开车。
虽然雨水仍在一个劲儿拍打着车窗玻璃，但可怕的暴风雨总算要过去了，晚上8：30，她开车从教堂少年班接她11岁的女儿玛迪逊回家。
玛迪坐在前边，两个初学走路的弟妹坐在后排的座椅上，靠背缚有安全带。39岁的麦克蕾，将她的蓝色福特探险者号开上了南草原路，从这里通向她们乡下别墅的家。车子打了一个弯儿准备越过Fawcett 河，突然麦克蕾被眼前的情景惊呆了：前面的路面塌陷下去，马路被雨水冲断了。她急忙砰地一声刹车，但SUV还是滑向塌陷的洞穴，跌入约莫20英尺的洪水渠里，又冲进河里，昔日的小河已经被暴风雨冲成了一道100英尺宽的河流，河水汹涌。石块和冲倒的树干向福特车横冲直撞，车身在水里东倒西歪，车窗被击碎。
“我真的没有想到我们能出去，”麦克蕾回忆到。车子淹进水了，当它遇到一根圆木样的东西时停了下来 。
是玛迪控制了局面。她从后边装货物的碎了的玻璃窗户爬出去，敏捷而矫健地攀上了已经恢复平衡的车顶，大声喊她的妈妈把两个小孩子抱起来。很快四个人一起挤在已经扁了的车顶上，当水涌过来时，她们竭力保持平衡，一点点往高处挪。麦克蕾把两岁的女儿抱在胸前，同时，把三岁孩子按在腿上用一只胳膊搂住他。两个孩子都很安静，麦克蕾都有点怀疑孩子是否安好。
玛迪喊道：“妈妈，我必须出去求救。”
麦克蕾意识到这是他们唯一的出路。如果她本人出去求救，她知道玛迪是无法抓住两个孩子的，那样，三个孩子都会淹死。但是玛迪的脚做了手术，拆了石膏才一个星期，正处于恢复阶段。怎么能让她去冒险呢？他们站在湍流的汹涌的河水中间，束手无策，天完全黑下来。他们离河岸还有25英尺之远。
麦克蕾望着她单薄、意志坚定的女儿。“我想，这也许是我最后和她说话的机会。我该告诉她什么呢？”她回忆到。“我爱你！”，她的声音越过咆哮的河水，“你是妈妈的骄傲。小心！”
“放心，我能行。”玛迪回答到。这个95磅重六年级的学生抓住一根从车上悬挂下来的细的、生着苔藓的树枝开始向河岸攀爬，到了河岸，她跳进多刺的灌木丛，然后开始猛跑。她回忆到，“我好像马达一样在加速。
冰冷的河水已经涌向麦克蕾的胸口，她搂着两个孩子的胳膊麻木了。她还能看到女儿的身影，女儿正向最近的邻居后牧场飞奔。忽然她听到玛迪的尖叫声。
“我撞在了带电的围栏上，”玛迪回忆到。“它确实电疼了我。”她赤着脚，浑身湿透，试图爬过电网，但试了四、五次，都被控制马的电流击倒。最后，她在门附近处发现了一个冷点，终于从那里出去了。麦克蕾这时看到山顶上走廊的灯亮了。
里边的邻居立即拨打了911，并被告知：紧急救援队已经得到Fawcett小河有紧急情况的消息，救援人员正从塌陷的桥边出发赶往另一个被困车辆地点。玛迪加入了邻居的队伍向小河跑去，帮助他们指认母亲被困的地点。当Tillamook救火队员拿着手电筒向水面照去，他们发现更远的河下游的地方有一辆淹没一半的汽车。“那不是我的家人！”她大叫。
“我在这儿，”麦克蕾的声音从小河传来“请救我们出去吧。”
当海岸警卫水上快捷救援队把另一家人救上来时，救援队长Chuck Spittles正千方百计寻找去救麦克蕾的办法。而后，他和他的队员将一架35英尺高的伸缩梯从一辆卡车上牵引到河岸边上，并把它搬到离SUV尽可能近的地方，距离麦克蕾上方10英尺。体重最轻的救火队员Lt.Aaron Burris，带着救生索爬下临时跳板，麦克蕾用救生索栓牢3岁的孩子，好让Burris将孩子提起来，交给梯子另一头的救援人员。然后用同样的办法把2岁的孩子救起。
最后，麦克蕾抓住梯子，爬了上来。一上到地面，她的麻木的两腿完全不听使唤了。被困已经一个多小时了。
玛迪一头扎进妈妈的怀抱。“她抱住我足足5分钟。”玛迪回忆到。麦克蕾和两个孩子因为体温过低被送进当地一家医院治疗，并于当晚被送回家。
第二次访问事发地点时，Spittles惊呆了。玛迪唯一抓住的树枝直径只有4英寸-太细了，几乎支撑不住她的身体。他惊叹道：“无法想象她是怎么靠它脱险的。”
玛迪和她的妈妈在SUV拽上来之前，又回到了Fawcett河边，现在也搞不清玛迪当时是怎么过河上岸的，也无须再去细想。玛迪因为她的英勇行为而获奖，但更让她欣慰的是她又回到了运动队和少年训练班。她的母亲认为女儿的英勇救援-“完全是奇迹。”