Officers save 2 from flood

[TexasStooge]

Dallas: They risk own lives to rescue homeless men trapped in culvert

By JASON TRAHAN / The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS, Texas - The concrete culvert under Webb Chapel Road is a home for several northwest Dallas men and women who have no other.

But as floodwaters from a thunderstorm Monday morning filled the trash-choked channel, the popular hangout near Crown Hill Cemetery nearly became the final resting place for a man who was sleeping there, another who awoke him just in time and several Dallas officers trying to save them.

"The water was coming really fast," said Officer Carol Mazzola, the first to arrive at the scene just before 11 a.m., after a 911 call.

Two homeless men were trapped in the culvert, which is bound on both sides by a ledge – inches wide – that is lined by a chain-link fence. It rarely kept people out of the ramshackle camp, and on this day, it blocked the two men's escape.

"When I got out of the squad car, I heard someone screaming, 'Help me! Help me!' I saw that there were two guys," Officer Mazzola said.

She ran to a gap upstream from the struggling men and made her way along the narrow ledge at the top of the culvert. With one hand, she grabbed the fence. With the other, she grabbed one of the men in the water as his friend, shoulder deep, clung to him.

For about two minutes, she held on as the current threatened to swallow the men.

More help arrived. A police sergeant stepped into traffic and commandeered an orange extension cord from a passing work truck. He threw it to the man who was nearly submerged and dragged him out of the culvert, over a fence and to safety.

Sgt. B.V. Bailey was in civilian clothes that morning. "There's no telling what that truck driver was thinking when he saw me take that cord off his truck," he said.

Another officer, Cpl. M.G. Phagan, went to help Officer Mazzola at the lip of the culvert.

'God was watching us'

Then someone in the sizable crowd now huddled around the scene handed Officer Paul Campopiano what turned out to be the ideal tool.

"God was watching us and saw that we needed bolt cutters," Officer Campopiano said.

He cut the fence and pulled them off the ledge.

"If anyone of us had done anything any differently, we would all have been dead," Cpl. Phagan said.

The officers say that they routinely roust homeless campers out of the culvert, which is typically strewn with broken liquor bottles, clothing, lottery tickets and shopping carts filled with even more junk.

"I hope the city puts up a better fence to keep people out of that thing," Officer Campopiano said. "This is close to a residential area. Kids play around there."

Weather miseries

A line of fast-moving thunderstorms led to the near tragedy. Wind gusts of up to 45 mph downed trees, and at one point there were about 22,000 storm-related power outages across the metropolitan area.

Half-inch hail was reported in Collin, Denton and Tarrant counties.

Rainfall across the area averaged about one inch, with 0.83 inches officially falling at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

The squall line ahead of the cold front was moving about 35 mph, and though rainfall was not extreme, it fell in a short period of time, resulting in some flooding.

Area rainfall amounts are still nearly 11 inches below normal for the year, and no rain is in the forecast for the next several days.

Staff writer David Renfrow and WFAA ABC 8 contributed to this report.