Karl Lopez (above), a lead maintenance technician for the Arizona Department of Transportation, recently helped first responders rescue a severely injured teenager stranded by floodwaters outside of Phoenix.
[Above photo by Arizona DOT]
On September 26, heavy rain triggered massive flooding east of Phoenix. While responding to that situation, two to three feet of floodwater forced Lopez to stop his emergency response truck along Jesse Hayes Road next to an ambulance, whose driver relayed an urgent need to reach an injured teen in the back of a pickup on the other side of the flooded street.
“They said that kid needed to get to the hospital ASAP,” Lopez said in a statement. But that wasn’t the only problem, for a pickup truck had stalled in the floodwaters, blocking any attempt to cross the area as seen in video provided by Lopez.
Lopez decided to move the stranded pickup, figuring his emergency response truck was heavy enough to stay put in the floodwater and protect him from its force so he could attach a chain to the other vehicle. He successfully towed the pickup from the road and waited for the floodwaters to recede so the ambulance could cross.
After about 15 minutes, the water receded a bit and the ambulance pushed forward. Lopez decided to follow in case the ambulance ran into trouble and needed a push. Luckily, it crossed the floodwaters safely on its own, with Lopez then helping load the injured teen into the rescue vehicle, which rushed the boy to a Phoenix hospital.
While Lopez said the flooding was the worst he’d seen in nearly nine years working for Arizona DOT in the area, his focus at the time was solely on figuring out how to overcome the raging waters to help the teenager.
“I just thought I needed to get that truck out of there so that ambulance could get through,” Lopez said. “That’s all I was thinking. I just acted on it.”
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