Highway Hero
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| 7/30/2010 |
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| A Minnesota state highway first responder rescued a woman and her two children from a sinking car Wednesday after it left the roadway and landed in a holding pond in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield. Don Machacek works for MnDOT`s Freeway Incident Response Safety Team, more commonly known as the "highway helpers" in Minnesota. He was the first on the scene. "I was on Diamond Lake Road in Minneapolis, just about to head north on 35-W when the call came in," Machacek told reporters, "But fortunately I was able to flip around on city streets and get on the interstate heading south instead. I got there in just a couple of minutes." The driver of the submerged 2003 Toyota Camry was Stella Obadiya of Hugo. She said, as a registered nurse, she knew it was important to stay calm even as the front seat was filling with water. She dialed 9-1-1 and crawled into the back seat with the children, ages 8 and 10. "They were saying, `Mom let`s get out. Let`s go`," Obadiya recalled, "I told them to start praying. And I told them, `They`ll come for us, they`ll come for us`." She said she doesn`t swim well, and thought it would be safest to wait until help arrived before trying to force open the door. "I worried that if we opened it the water would come in and sink us completely. It had stabilized, but I knew if the back seat started to flood we`d have to open the door and take our chances in the pond." That`s when Machacek pulled up and followed the skid marks until they disappeared. He could see Obadiya`s sedan had left the road, broken a fence, mowed down a small tree and plowed into the pond. He still wasn`t sure if anyone was inside. "I jumped over two fences, got down to the edge of the water and I saw three sets of eyes looking out of the back window of the vehicle," Machacek remarked, "I radioed my dispatcher, `I`m going in.` Then I took my radio off, my wallet out, and my cell phone out and went into the pond." He found himself stumbling at first because of the thick layer of mud at the bottom of the pond, but managed to get back on his feet and open the rear passenger side door. MnDOT captured the episode from a traffic camera overhead. On the tape, Machacek can be seen leading Obadiya and the children toward safety. As they exited the car, more water poured in through the open door and it sank further. "My instincts just took over," he explained later to reporters, "I thought, `Okay, they`re still in the car. I`ve got to go in. Nobody else is here so I got to do it.` So I did." |
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