Senior credits daughter, neighbor & firefighters with rescue from septic tank
VERSAILLES, Ind. (WKRC) - It was an unusual rescue for Versailles firefighters: a senior citizen trapped in her septic tank.
“I was walking off the steps of my patio, and when I got to the bottom of the steps, I stepped on the stones that were there and I just went straight down into a hole,” Judy Meinert explained.
Meinert had been up and down those steps for years with no problem.
“This time, with all of the rain we’ve had and because there’s a lot of dirt there, it was probably heavy enough when I stepped on it. That’s all, and I just went right down,” Meinert said.
Meinert yelled for help.
Neighbors couldn’t hear her, but Meinert’s daughter Missy, who has special, needs saw her mother needed help.
Meinert said, “She looked at me because she couldn’t understand, and you wouldn’t if you saw somebody that was tall before being really short, and then I told her, I said, ‘Well, I’m in the ground. There’s a hole.’ And then she understood.”
It took Missy about 10 minutes to find someone, but a neighbor’s daughter followed Missy because, although Missy is non-verbal, the woman understood that Missy needed help.
The neighbor’s adult daughter called for help.
Versailles Fire Chief Ben Sieverding said, “We set up a rescue tripod above the tank, ran a rope rescue system, put a rescue harness around the victim and then lifted her vertically straight out of the tank.”
With Missy looking on, rescue workers were able to get Meinert out safely.
“It's the first time we got somebody out of a septic tank, but we use the equipment before on other rescues,” Sieverding said.
Meinert is glad that her daughter was persistent and found the right people to help.
“She's pretty special,” Meinert said. “We are a team. Aren't we?” she said, smiling at her daughter.
