HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Flash flooding just outside of Huntington Thursday evening claimed one life but more lives may have been lost had it not been for the owner of a gym and two of his workers.
The three were at Bozhi’s GYM Nest on Green Valley Road at about 6 p.m. Thursday when a hard rain flooded the road, which isn’t unusual, but this was unlike the other times. Gym owner Lance Spencer heard from those coming into the gym that a few cars were stuck so he and the others headed outside.
“This is crazy,” Spencer remembered thinking when he spoke with MetroNews Friday. “It came up within probably 15-foot of my building. The parking lot is about a hundred feet deep there.”
Spencer an the others grabbed a long nylon gym rope–Spencer said he took it because it was long and it would float. The three then used it to approach a car that was almost completely covered by the water. They were able to get the man who was driving and a woman in the backseat out but there was a woman left in the front. The car started to move, Spencer said.
“The car started crawling, it started moving right then. It moved 30 or 40 feet and moved sideways and we thought it was going to stop and then it washed down the creek,” Spencer said. “We ran down after it got pinned under a bridge. We broke the back glass out and tried to climb down into it and tried to do everything we could to get from the back to the front but there was just no way. We couldn’t get past all of the stuff in it. There was nothing more we could do.”
Spencer later found out the woman in the passenger seat, who was the driver’s wife, suffered from a medical condition which likely hindered her trying to get out of the car by herself. He said there was a wheelchair wedged in the back of the vehicle.
Spencer said he didn’t give much thought to the possible consequences of going into the high water. He said he just reacted.
“That’s what we did. We just ran out and did what we could,” he said.
The name of the victim has yet to be released by the Cabell County Sheriff’s Department.