Two women and baby rescued from creek in Goodhope

GOODHOPE, Mo. – The Goodhope community is rejoicing Friday night after a successful rescue of two women and a baby from the rushing waters of a creek where their vehicle was swept away during a flood.

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office worked the water rescue on County Road Y-521 Friday afternoon.

According to the Douglas County Sheriff, a van with two women and a baby was trying to cross the bridge between Cowskin and Prarie Creeks near Goodhope Friday afternoon when the van stalled.

Pedestrians who saw the danger jumped in to help on one side of the bridge, and Douglas County Sheriff’s Deputies worked to help on the other side of the bridge, but the water was rushing too fast.

The van was swept off the bridge and floated 200-300 yards downstream and before it stuck in a stream where no one could reach it.

“The water came up so quick once the van got in the water, within about a 30-minute time frame it rose an additional 4 to 5 feet,” Douglas County Sheriff Chris Degase said.

The Sheriff’s Office called MSHP Troop D and the water rescue team with the Missouri Water Patrol, but Mark Henry with the Douglas County Conversation Agency got there faster with a swift water boat.

“We were really worried considering there was a baby. I have lifejackets. We tried to put lifejackets on the victims whenever we got to them so that they were there safely if something was to happen and we ended up in the water that at least had lifejackets. But I don’t have one for the baby. So baby was the utmost concern as far as I kept it close to me while I tried to run the boat,” said Henry.

The boat was able to reach the women and the baby, who were sitting on top of the almost completely submerged van.

“Whenever there’s three people on the top of that van. Yeah, there’s a lot of things that could go wrong. And we were just, we knew that time was of the essence, obviously, because the river was still rising and we didn’t know how much time we had,” said Henry.

Shockingly, according to Sheriff Degase, no one was injured.

“Everyone is safe. They were able to get everyone in the boat. They got them to the far shore over there and they were all checked out. They were all safe. We were very fortunate that they don’t always turn out like this, and we were just very fortunate for that,” Sheriff Degase said.

Several agencies helped including the Goodhope Fire Department, MSHP Troop D, Missouri Water Patrol, Missouri Conservation, Ava Rural Fire Protection District, Ava City Fire Department, Ava Police Department, and several volunteer firefighters, in addition to several regular pedestrians who saw the danger and jumped in to help.

“We couldn’t have done it without them [the volunteers and pedestrians]. We all breathed a big sigh of relief when they made it to shore,” said Sheriff Degase.

Michael Schiff, one of the volunteer firefighters from Stone County who helped the women and baby into the rescue boat, said that everyone was relieved when they got the women and baby safely on shore,

“You’re instant family when that happens. You don’t you don’t have to know anybody to do this. You are just here to serve the community. People. We were hugging each other. We didn’t even know who we were, but we got them back there,” Schiff said.

He added that training paid off for many emergency responders today.

“When you could do something like this, after all of the training, you never want it to happen, but you’re glad you can help out,” Schiff said.

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