It’s a small fraternity, we who have been sucked through storm sewers in flash floods, so I drove out to Bethel Park last week to meet our newest member.
Ben Smith, 18 and an Eagle Scout, was only trying to help on the night of June 20, helping to move stranded trucks and clear debris on Clifton Road, when it happened. His foot slipped into the drainage ditch and he got a quick lesson in water power.
“I was kinda freaking out,” he said. “I grabbed my buddy’s hand but it was pretty instant.”
He was telling the story a week later in the warmth of his kitchen, just up Thunderwood Drive from the scene. His mother, Jackie, was listening and tearing up when she tried to speak of almost losing her son. She, her husband, Steve, and 24-year-old daughter, Molly, had run down the street to Clifton Road after a neighbor, who’d seen Ben get pulled into the drainage pipe, had run over to tell them.
Before the Smiths even reached the Clifton intersection a tenth of a mile away, they heard people yelling, “He’s OK! He’s out, he’s out, he’s out!” And there he was, sitting on the side of the road, ready for a round of hugs.
You’ll forgive Mrs. Smith if it’s still hard for her to talk about; the utter helplessness she felt was even harder than what her son endured. I know because what happened to Ben happened to me Sept. 22, 1979, in Danville, Va. — but that story is olds; let’s stick with the news here.
The corrugated metal pipe that sucked Ben in is maybe four feet in diameter and 100 yards long, cold and dark all the way through. He guesses he was in there about a minute, banging around. “It was hard to tell if I was hitting anything — except when my head hit.” He tucked his arms and head as best he could, holding his breath but swallowing water and wondering how long he could last before passing out.
“When I was in it, it felt like I was going down rather than kind of parallel. So in my head I was like, ‘Where am I going to end up?’”
That blessed first breath arrived with warmth and relief.
“And it felt like unreal,” he said. “Knowing that I got out. You know: just in shock.”
I know. My pipe trip was shorter but as intense. I hadn’t been helping anyone; I’d been unwinding with newsroom colleagues after our shift ended at midnight. Deciding to leave about 3 a.m. during a hellish electrical storm, my car stalled at a traffic light down the hill from the apartment I’d just left. Wading through waist-deep water, I dropped into an unseen ditch, got pulled into big cement pipe that went under a two-lane road, and then had to wait out the storm in a fallen tree in the middle of a raging, rain-swollen creek for more than an hour. The storm raged and the water rose — then fell as the rain lessened. Finally, the stream got shallow enough to clamber back to the road.
There’s a longer version I could tell; I’ve dined out on that story for 39 years. But as Ben shared his saga, I was reminded how even the most mundane experiences that followed my accident brought an almost awestruck appreciation. Just to be warm again, to see my friends and family again, to enjoy a meal again — instead of drowning at 23.
“Like in that moment,” Ben said, “I could have lost my life. And at that moment I wasn’t ready to. I had so much ahead of me. It kind of puts your brain into a perspective, like how much you have and how much you can lose. How quickly your life can change.”
When he came out the other side and started walking back, he was amazed at how far he’d traveled. People were coming up to him yelling, “There’s a kid that fell in the sewer,’’ and he was telling them, “Oh yeah. That was me.’’
He went home to shower, which might seem ironic but he felt filthy. He wasn’t two minutes into it when his mother knocked on the bathroom door and told him emergency medical technicians were there to take him to the hospital without delay. They drove him to UPMC Mercy where he was given a tetanus shot and had his head, neck, lungs and stomach scanned. He got home around 3 a.m., about six hours after he entered the pipe.
I wound up getting a job at a bigger newspaper a few months after I went into the pipe and my story got wide play across Virginia. Ben intends to enter the nursing program this fall at Duquesne University. And on Tuesday, his co-workers at Alpine Pools — how appropriate is that? — presented him with an inflatable raft.
He’s not sure where he’ll use it, but says it won’t be on Clifton Road.
Brian O’Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947 or Twitter @brotheroneill
First Published: July 1, 2018, 11:30 a.m.
