Firefighters used a pulley system anchored to the railroad tracks to let rescuers reach the riverbank. All photos © Eric Francis.
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION - Sunday evening’s brief but heavy downpour loosened the ground beneath a tent where a homeless couple were sleeping just above the bank of the Connecticut River and sent them rolling down a steep muddy embankment onto the rocks right beside the flowing water.
Minutes before midnight the woman’s boyfriend reached out to 911 dispatchers on his cell phone and reported that he was okay but his partner was possibly in the water with a twisted or broken ankle and needed rescue.
Firefighters from Hartford and Lebanon responded with their town’s heavy rescue trucks and ambulances and Hanover Fire sent a contingent with their Technical Rope Rescue Trailer, all converging on a parking lot at the top of Prospect Street in White River Junction, behind the state office building overlooking the river.
The first responders to reach the scene were Hartford police officers Michael Goslin and Randy St. Peter, who located the panicking woman in the pitch dark at the base of a sharp ten-foot drop-off that is itself at the base of a steep wooded slope about a hundred feet below the railroad tracks that parallel the river bank between downtown White River Junction and the Wilder Dam.
After determining that the woman, who gave her name as “Missy,” was more shaken up than injured, Officer Goslin walked back out of the woods to guide firefighters back in while Sgt. St. Peter stayed with her on the edge of river.
Rescuers from three fire departments hiked in down the railroad tracks in the pitch black darkness.
Over a dozen firefighters ended up hiking about a quarter of a mile down the wet railroad tracks, passing unoccupied tents and, inexplicably, a baby’s playpen sitting right beside the rails until they reached the spot above where the woman was located.
Using heavy webbing straps similar to seatbelts the firefighters secured ropes and pulleys to the heavy steel rails (after calling the railroad to warn them rescuers were on the tracks) and lowered ropes down through the heavy brush and gloom below to the water’s edge.
Crews used the heavy steel rails as anchor points for the technical rope rescue equipment that was lowered down the slope to the victim.
As rescuers readied all-terrain vehicles and metal Stokes baskets with large wheels in case they needed to stretcher the woman out, they determined that she was calming down and had decided she could walk on her own. Firefighters decided to put her in a harness like the firefighters themselves were wearing and walk her up the slippery embankment with the help of ropes.
Just under an hour after the initial 911 call, at 12:45 a.m., the woman reached the railroad embankment and, after assuring the assembled rescuers that she was okay, she was escorted down the tracks to the parking lot where her boyfriend was waiting.
Firefighters led Missy to safety up a steep slope reaching the railroad tracks at 12:45 a.m. Monday morning.
Police said the couple explained they were originally from Maine and had been staying in the Littleton, New Hampshire area until they recently lost access to the trailer they had been living in. They traveled to White River Junction to “check out the area” with another couple, who had been sleeping in a small car in a parking lot on Prospect Street while they stayed in the tent, which was hidden farther up the riverbank, for the past couple of nights.
Hartford Fire Chief Scott Cooney said the woman was checked out by EMTs but declined any further medical attention and was released from the scene.
Eric Francis is a veteran Upper Valley freelancer, covering crime, fires, natural disasters, and the occasional rabid bobcat.
