Groom’s father jumped into debris-filled river to save woman as flooding swept house away
Eddie Hunnell was helping clear trees blocking the road to his son’s wedding rehearsal dinner when the North Fork of the New River rose on Sept. 27, cutting off access to the River House Inn in Grassy Creek.
Hunnell returned to the inn and overheard a neighbor say a woman was trapped in her house about 150 yards south. They went to help and found Leslie Worth, 67, wearing a life jacket in a second-floor window at her home. Her husband, Phil, was unable to reach her.
“There was 10 feet of water just raging, going around the house on both sides, so there was no way to get to her,” Hunnell said.
As Hunnell, 57, took a life vest and oar from the inn’s owner and set out in a canoe, 70-year-old Phil Worth waded chest deep into the water. As the remains of homes floated by, and they failed to reach Leslie, Hunnell shouted at her to jump. Leslie leapt into the water as more debris cracked against the house and it began to disintegrate.
“I wasn’t going to get to her, and if I did get to her, her trying to get her in was probably going to flip the canoe anyway,” Hunnell said.
So the Holly Springs resident jumped into the rough current and debris funneling toward a tennis court fence.
“I grabbed ahold of her and just said ‘kick,’ trying to keep her feet up ... so they don’t get caught on something,” he said. “We got past that 150 yards of really fast water. At the very end was a standing wave a foot and a half high that our heads had to go through. After that, the water was slower.”
Candlelight wedding, building new lives
Hunnell pulled Leslie Worth to shore and crawled behind her, collapsing on the grass. His foot was bruised, but he and Worth were OK, he said, crediting his response to skills learned on Northern Durham High School’s swim team in the 1980s and lifeguard training at N.C. State University.
Nineteen years in Colorado, flyfishing and floating on rivers swollen with melting snowpack, taught him about fast-moving water.
“As the water rises, it’s dangerous. As it rises more, in some ways, it’s not dangerous anymore, because you’re way above the rocks,” he said. “It’s the fast water through the rocks and trees that’s dangerous (or) when you get pinned against something.”
After the storm, he started a GoFundMe campaign to help the Worths’ rebuild. In October, they were special guests at the Umstead Hotel and Spa in Raleigh, where over $300,000 was raised for the World Central Kitchen and Southern Smoke Foundation, two nonprofits that provide disaster relief.
The Worths lost everything and are staying in a friend’s house, Hunnell said. They talk regularly, and he plans to visit early next year.
The wedding, on a hill overlooking the river, “turned out very nice,” Hunnell said, despite a few hitches and a rehearsal dinner that “was a disaster.” The reception was held by candlelight.
“The wedding was perfect in my view,” Hunnell said.
