By Christine Dempsey
Journal Inquirer
OXFORD, Conn. — Shot from a bar, the shaky cellphone video shows water moving fast through a shopping plaza parking lot Sunday. In the distance, someone who is partially submerged appears to be leaning against or holding onto a brick support for a large sign.
A firetruck is nearby, but rescuers are unable to get to the person before she is swept away, according to fire officials.
A similar scene played out about a quarter-mile away, this time a woman in a car that started floating away. In that case, firefighters with rescue ropes also were swept down the road-turned-river.
Both women were found dead Monday, victims of some of the worst flooding southwestern Connecticut has seen. State police identified them as Ethelyn Joiner, 65, and Audrey Rostkowski, 71, both Oxford residents.
The failed attempts to save two local women in this town of 13,000 was heartbreaking for family and others around the state, but also hard for the would-be rescuers to accept, Oxford Fire Chief Scott Pelletier said. They overshadow the positive efforts during the devastating floods.
There were countless successful rescues — so many Pelletier wasn’t able to come up with an estimate by Tuesday.
The firefighters who were trying to rescue the woman at the signpost were stymied as rushing water covered the wheels and exhaust pipes of the firetruck, which was among those being worked on in the days after the floods, Pelletier said.
The crew itself became trapped at Quarry Walk shopping center and apartments, he said, “so they helped shelter 140 people.”
Firefighters pulled people out of cars as water rose in the streets, he said. They rescued 30 people — including a 5-month-old — at a 3-year-old’s birthday party at Jackson Cove on Lake Zoar, Oxford First Selectman George Temple said at a news conference Monday.
In another save, Beacon Falls firefighters rescued 19 people and a dog who were trapped by dangerous floodwaters in an Oxford restaurant and home.
For the rescue at the Brookside Inn Restaurant in Oxford, firefighters guided customers, one at a time, to safety on a ladder that extended from a firetruck through a window, forming a bridge over the parking lot that had turned into a raging river. One by one, with a firefighter holding on from behind, each customer half-walked, half-crawled on the ladder while Dumpsters sped past in the rapids underneath.
But it’s the failed attempts that trouble firefighters.
“When a rescue effort is unsuccessful, it sticks with you,” said Andrew Ellis, fire chief in Brookfield. “It changes you and there’s ramifications for you personally and professionally after that going forward.”
“You always second-guess yourself. ‘Is there anything else I could have done?’” he said Thursday. “We’re our own toughest critics.”
After an event like that, firefighters often will practice techniques in an attempt to avoid a repeat.
“Let’s try it a hundred times so we can’t get it wrong,” Ellis said. “We like to have a perfect score. When you don’t achieve that, it stinks.”
In Oxford, crews had peer discussions about the ordeal, but some firefighters don’t participate in group talks, Pelletier said.
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So firefighters also are given the chance to talk when there is only one other person in the room, and such counseling has been going on, he said.
“That’s why we do one-on-one,” Pelletier said.
Ellis said firefighters have to take a broader view.
“What you have to look at is how many people were saved,” he said. While one loss is too many, “in the big picture, the lives that were saved far outnumber the ones that were lost.”
“I feel for those firefighters who were not able to help those ladies,” Ellis said, “and I’m proud of them for putting their lives at risk.”
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