Men Risked Lives to Save Driver in Buckingham Floods

Hurricane Irene had passed through, but the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee were dumping even more rain on Central Bucks County.

In Buckingham Township, water was rising quickly along New Hope Road. The spot near Creek Road in the lower portion of the township is notorious for flooding.

The nearby bridge had been closed to traffic because of rising floodwaters, but the driver of a pickup truck chose to try to motor through anyway and got stuck in the early morning hours of the storm.

That was the scene a couple weeks ago, but it was the heroic actions that came next that garnered attention for a Buckingham Township employee and a volunteer firefighter with the Lingohocken company.

First responders had been called to the bridge where the driver was stuck. Requests went out for a rescue boat owned by Northampton Township Fire Co., but the marine unit had been at another water rescue and couldn’t get there right away.

Meanwhile, the strong current of water on New Hope Road had been rising rapidly, pushing against the stranded truck and moving it in the process.

Buckingham’s assistant roadmaster Wayne Ewer, who is also a Midway firefighter, was at the scene with a front end loader. He maneuvered it onto the water-covered bridge - with Lingohocken assistant fire chief Dave James in the bucket.

James pulled the stranded motorist onto the loader, rescuing him from the rising floodwaters.

“It was really a life-and-death situation,” said Buckingham Township manager Dana Cozza, noting the two men risked their lives rather than wait for the rescue boats to get there. “We’re very proud of them.”

Ewer had been out since about 4 that morning, using the loader to clear trees from roadways, Nick DeMeno, who heads the township road maintenance department, explained when contacted later. Ewer, who has worked for the township for 37 years, was on vacation and unavailable for comment.

“He doesn’t like to make a big deal out of it, but obviously that was very heroic,” said DeMeno. “He’s a good man. He knows the machine and he knows what he can and can’t do with it.”

The water rescue came as the double punch of Irene and Lee socked the area.

First came the winds and rains unleashed by Hurricane Irene, which left downed trees, overflowing creeks and widespread power outages.

Then Tropical Storm Lee arrived, expected to be the less threatening of the weather pair, but still causing flooded roadways not seen in the area in years.

Cozza outlined problems created by the storms at a recent Buckingham supervisors’ meeting.

“Thankfully, we did fare better than many (municipalities), but there were still some issues,” she said.

Before Irene arrived, township staff met to make preparations, she said.

Township vehicles, including police cars, road equipment and generators, were fueled and ready to go. Information about hurricane preparedness was placed on the township’s website and email blasts were sent to residents, telling them to sign up for Bucks County’s ReadyNotifyPA, an alert system that contacts individuals through their email accounts or cell phones during an emergency.

When Irene hit, township crews were out in full force, coping with downed trees and power lines as well as some flooding.

During the storm, Buckingham police also were handling a homicide – the first one in the township since the late 1970s – at a home on Church School Road. Barbara Ruehl was killed, and her son-in-law, Leonard John Egland - also a suspect in the shooting deaths of three others in Virginia, including her daughter, Carrie Ruehl Egland - was at the end of a tense manhunt involving several police departments.

Involved with the pursuit of the suspect, one of the township’s patrol cars, a 2008 Dodge charger, was left behind and then ended up getting submerged by rising floodwaters.

After Irene came Lee, when the township received more than 4 inches of rain in just a few hours, causing flash flooding and multiple road closures.

But that storm caught many off guard.

“Honestly, I don’t think people were as prepared for Lee,” said Cozza. “You did have a lot more emergencies on the road.”

Following a review after the storms, Cozza had these suggestions for improvements:

• Make a permanent emergency preparedness page for the township’s website,
• Place a trailer with emergency equipment at another location in the township. The township’s maintenance garage is on Upper Mountain Road, which is well known for flooding.  
• Provide better signage for road closings, giving motorists more detailed information, and
• Investigate different options for the township’s telecommunications carrier. There were “difficulties” with its current provider, Nextel Communications, said Cozza, and staff had to rely on their personal phones to communicate.

In other business that night, supervisors:

• approved spending $24,345 for a 2011 Dodge Charger to replace the police vehicle lost to flooding. The township expects an insurance reimbursement of $17,200.
• approved a 22.5-acre subdivision that will be split into four lots. The approval was based on several revisions to the plans of Pine Crest Farm, owned by Jeremy and Holly Fergusson. The property is at Burnt House Hill and Church roads. A portion of it is part of a conserved area.
• awarded Bountiful Acres of Buckingham a bid to complete landscape improvements at The Ridings of Buckingham for $24,000.