FedEx driver rescues man on Highway 34

Like many drivers on Tuesday, Odell Bunch decided to take a chance driving across a flooded road.

Bunch, 78, crossed the Byrd Creek Bridge and headed over water-covered Highway 34.

Wrong decision.

Bunch's 1990 Ford Ranger slid off the road, carried by fast-moving water. The truck tilted and stopped. Bunch knew he had to get out quickly. The FedEx truck behind him pulled alongside and stopped. Courier Jay McMullin stepped into the water, extending his hand as Bunch got out of his pickup. They drove to a nearby gas station. McMillin made sure Bunch was OK before resuming his route.

"I don't think there's any getting home tonight," Bunch said, laughing while waiting for a tow truck. "I didn't think it was that bad, because everyone else was going across. I'm 78 years old, but I feel like I'm 100 right now. If that man hadn't stopped, I might not have seen 80."

He couldn't reach his wife, who was at their home on Highway 34, or his daughter, who lives on Route B.

"I tried calling, but no one answers," he said.

A record rainfall obscured the park next to Osage Community Centre, low-lying farmers' fields and nearly every dip in every Southeast Missouri road.

Millersville assistant fire chief Travis Aufdenberg sat in his pickup truck, wife in the passenger seat, on the Highway 34 near the Byrd Creek bridge. The bridge could still be seen over the river, but water rushed up on either side.

"We're telling people not to go, but we can't stop nobody from going across," he said.

Robin Long, who had parked her Chrysler Concorde LXi on the side of the road nearby, hoped the water would abate so she and her daughter, Katy, 12, could get across to their home on County Road 349.

"I've lived here 20 years," she said. "I've seen it flood on another bridge, but I personally have never seen this flooded."

A moment later a woman drove her Ford Explorer toward the water-covered road, then stopped. She rolled down her window and asked several people standing nearby what to do.

"Are they letting people cross?" she asked. On hearing it was an at-you-own-risk choice, she watched a line of traffic, led by an 18-wheeler, move over the bridge and the flooded road toward her. She pursed her lips.

"The water was up to that semi's headlights," she said. "I've got two little kids. I have got to get home." Cars were lining up behind her sport utility vehicle. Some drivers got out to walk close to the flooded area before making a decision to turn around and seek an alternate route. Most turned around.

Scott Hayden of Scott City was on his way to a friend's farm when he encountered a water-covered stretch of Route EE near Delta. Others were driving over it, so he did, too.

"About three-quarters of the way through, it just stopped," he said. The van managed to coast to the end of the water, but Hayden couldn't get the vehicle restarted.

"I'm supposed to help a friend put his turkeys in the barn," he said. "He's got about $10,000 worth of turkeys."

Marian Hutchings of Marble Hill, Mo., in an e-mail the Southeast Missourian, wrote that her family "started putting things up and moving things out about 8 a.m. By 12:30 p.m., the water was lapping at the porch.

"The phone is out but the internet works. The plumbing and electric are still going."

She was measuring the depth of the water by watching the latticework on her neighbor's front porch.

"The water had two diamonds to go before it covered the porch. But only part has disappeared."

She said her family would watch television, having laundered clothes soaked by the rain.

"I'm really eyeing that fishing boat across the street," she said in her sign-off. "Hope it doesn't float off."

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127