Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Eddie Meadows Rescue

The first time I heard about Eddie being missing was in an email message from Roy, a triathlon friend.

Triknights,

It is Friday about 1:30 and I am asking for help if anyone is available some time today. A friend of mine (Ed) who works in research park went for a run yesterday at noon and never returned. The police are looking for him as are the UCF ROTC. But, I am thinking runners would know where runners would go. He is an older guy but very fit so he could have went 3 to 4 miles away from research park. This may be silly but I am planning on riding my bike where I think a marathon runner would go from research park to see if I can find him. He probably was going to run for 45 min to an hour. I could use help from some of you in searching too. Particularly, I do not know the trails around the campus that he probably did know and may have been on.

So, if anyone can spare some time today, I would appreciate you help in looking for Ed.

I will email the listserv if he is found.

Roy

I had planned on heading out Saturday to help with the search – but instead was feeling very fatigued on Saturday. I had seen that there were large crews that were looking for him and felt pretty secure that with all the hands out there on Saturday (and also on Sunday) that he would soon be found. By Sunday, when I heard there was no success – I felt some guilt that I had not helped. My wife Linda had told me that a friend Bob Putnam was trying to put together a group of experienced orienteers to look for him and I called Bob the next morning (morning) to tell him I would be meeting them at the command post Monday morning.

The scene at the command post was not what I had expected. Most of the people that had turned out to volunteer were in street clothes. I felt that we would need to be searching the deeply wooded areas. Bob, Jerry, and I were the only ones dressed correctly for what I expected the search would require. After getting the facts of where he was last seen and the direction Bob I and I made a decision on where we would search first. My theory and Bob was in a agreement was that he had looped back around to the east side of campus and had taken the back trails along the far east side of the UCF campus.

One other gentleman with 2 dogs (Bruce Truog) joined our group and we first decided the search the area of the ditch along the far east side of campus. I had ridden mountain bike from my house and planned to use it to help me cover more ground. While Bob and Jerry covered some of the rabbit trails on foot – I used the bike to scout ahead and behind along the east side of the ditch. Bruce went up the middle of the ditch with the dogs wearing hip waders), a truly amazing sight with the two hunting dogs in the lead.

Eventually Bob and Jerry and I bushwhacked across the ditch and after a few tries of heading into very thick brush we were able to get all three of us and the bike out to the north-south trail on the west side of the ditch. At that point we planned to split up to cover more terrain. My hunch had me thinking he was either in the thick woods west of the trail where we were, or in the deep swamp west of the water tower and north of Neptune Drive. I biked south (while Bob and Jerry headed north) and decided I would look for areas that were the ATV tracks from the previous days searching weren’t found. This took me along the retention ponds on the North side of Neptune Drive. Along that section I somehow entered into an area of bees, but only picked up one sting from one that had crawled into my shirt. My plan was to follow the treeline and fence west along the edge of the retention ponds and then hop the fence and follow a sparse trail on the north side back to my bike and then I’d meet up with Bob and the other team members.

It was extremely thick where I jumped the fence and it took me a few minutes to bushwhack my way to a more open area northeast of the fence corner. From there I was stopping about every 20-30 feet and listening for the signs of a body – the buzzing of flies and the sounds of carrion birds. My plan was to take the indistinct trail back through the woods to where I had dropped my bike. It was at this point I head the splash coming from within the Bayhead and I called out “hello”. I was immediately greeted by a series of “help!” calls. At this point I though another rescuer might be back in the swamp area and had found the body and was calling for help. I called “are you looking for Eddie?” and heard back “I am Eddie”. I had been walking (quickly) in the direction of the voice – trying not to make so much noise that I would not be able to hear the voice. I yelled back – “Stay there – I’m coming” and immediately broke into a full run directly into the swamp. We called out – “Can you see me?” and basically kept shouting until I came upon him about 100-150 meters back in about thigh deep water, The swamp was extremely thick at this point and was extremely tough to move through. I first checked his condition which was surprisingly good – he was tired and thirsty – covered in scratches and bites – but was lucid and standing. He asked me if I could help him find his way out of the swamp and I said sure. He was heading East which would have taken him much deeper into the swamp – we wanted to head south to get him out. At the same time I had the phone out and was calling 911. I had some frustration with the 911 operator who kept wanting an intersection to send rescue crews to. I eventually convinced her to send the crews to the UCF observatory and told her to please ask them to turn on their sirens so we could use them to keep our south bearing. When Eddie had seen my phone – he immediately asked to call his wife who he said would be worried and probably angry with him. I dialed his number and handed him the phone and he had a tearful conversation with what I think was his son on the other end.

We fought our way out of the swamp (Eddie mostly on his own power) and as we emerged the rescue crews were coming towards us from the road. Eddie was relieved to see an actual trail and despite being very thirsty and hungry he was eager to get out of the woods and actually led the entire crew out – jogging the last little bit to the ambulance. After he was safely in the ambulance I jogged back to get my bike and the rest of my team – who had already heard the news by the time I got to them. We headed back over to the rescue trucks where the press was waiting (they were fast) and showed the folks the details of the rescue.

Eddie had been in the woods from Thursday at noon, till the next Monday at 11 Am when he was found. He survived by staying low in the water of the swamp – keeping cool and preventing further dehydration. He had drunk the swamp water and eaten berries to survive. I was elated to have found him alive and OK – it was one incredible tale of survival.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ron,
Thanks for saving Eddie's life. As a member of UCUMC I had been praying many times a day for a miracle and God provided you!

God Bless,
Linda