I had an event full night last night on the Cahtahoochee River my first rescue was one of the very few airboaters in my area had been drinking all day and decided to go play in his boat on his flooded Air strip and need less to say he ended up centering a Ceadar tree at full throttel and all most killing his self I have just posted the photo's on the gallery and the fire dept had no way to get to him so it was Airboat to the rescue then after talking to Rick on the phone last night about this incident I got another phone call from the Fire dept needing my help again they told me that they had two telacomunication workers that were removing trees from fiber optic lines on the river from the flooding we were having and they were on jet ski's and that the tree they had been removing had swept them off there ski's and into the fast moving water and could not be found I told them I would be there as soon as I could get the boat hooked up to the truck. when I got there there were many fire crews on the hwy 166 bridge and a helo in the Air where the men had been working .the river was so high that I could not get my boat under it and the boat ramp was on the wrong side so I had to go about 9 miles down river to the Hwy 92 bridge where other fire crews were waiting for me and this time there was a place I could put the boat in on the right side of the bridge a DNR officer met me and rode with me on the boat and with all my search lights on and him with a hand held search light we started up river with the helo above and his light .We traveled about 6 miles up river when one of my side search lights caught something so I got off the throttel and with the river moving 8 to 10 mph
we backed up real fast and there they were up in a fallen oak tree hanging about 3 feet off the water and this is when the pucker factor started ,geting these two guys off this tree in this swift moving water so I turned and circled around and eased up to them and I told the DNR officer as soon as we get to them we need to move fast so when we got to the tree they jumped and he grabed them and they were in the boat and I got on the power real quick to get away from the tree then I turned the boat and headed back down river the DNR officer got on the radio and told all the crews that we had them and we were headed back to the hwy 92 bridge about 100 yrds from the bridge we could hear a chearing croud on the bridge of Firemen,police and civilans needless to say there is a lot of people today sold on the Value of an AIRBOAT and when I got the guys to the landing I was met by one of the young men's Father and he told me thank you for saving his Son's life, this is what makes the job so worth while.
we backed up real fast and there they were up in a fallen oak tree hanging about 3 feet off the water and this is when the pucker factor started ,geting these two guys off this tree in this swift moving water so I turned and circled around and eased up to them and I told the DNR officer as soon as we get to them we need to move fast so when we got to the tree they jumped and he grabed them and they were in the boat and I got on the power real quick to get away from the tree then I turned the boat and headed back down river the DNR officer got on the radio and told all the crews that we had them and we were headed back to the hwy 92 bridge about 100 yrds from the bridge we could hear a chearing croud on the bridge of Firemen,police and civilans needless to say there is a lot of people today sold on the Value of an AIRBOAT and when I got the guys to the landing I was met by one of the young men's Father and he told me thank you for saving his Son's life, this is what makes the job so worth while.
