A red cross in front of a church was a lifesaver for Davy Hite’s aunt, who said she believes surviving a perilous situation in South Carolina’s floods involved divine intervention.
“It’s really, really absolutely incredible that she’s still with us,” the Elite Series pro said of Clara Gantt, who spent hours clinging to the cross in raging waters. “She has been very reluctant to talk to the press as a whole because she didn’t want to make it about her.
“She totally thinks it’s an act of God.”
Hite said the entire family praised the Lord that Gantt, 70, was among the 175 water rescues in the region and not among the 17 who died from the record rain and floods caused by Hurricane Joaquin.
Reports say Gantt had stayed at her daughter’s house in Blythewood and headed out to church early last Sunday. Driving in heavy rain, Gantt’s car stalled in water flowing over Hwy 21 from Lake Elizabeth.
Her calls to 911 were futile, but family came. Her grandson Travis Catchings went to her aid with a deer harness and rope.
“By the time they got there, my car shifted and went backwards down into a field,” Gantt told NBC station WISC-TV. “I said, ‘Dear Lord, are you taking me home right now?’ Immediately I flipped over to my back and it was like he said, ‘No, not right now.’”
When Catchings got to her vehicle, it was resting in a ditch next to the large cross. He somehow opened the car door against the rising water, got her out of the car and secured her to the cross.
“She was attached to it and hanging on,” Hite said. “It basically became her flotation device. She absolutely thinks it was straight from God. It’s been an eye-opening experience. My aunt, her faith and her resilience, at her age. That whole story is incredible.”
Hite said he believed it took rescuers some time to get the right equipment there and plan the rescue. During their wait, Catchings recorded harrowing video of the rushing water, emergency lights in the distance, a glimpse of himself and Gantt, and the bright red cross. She only suffered a broken ankle.
wistv.com – Columbia, South Carolina
“It’s a family of great faith,” Hite said. “They are not wanting to do anything but give all the credit to God — for Jesus being there with her and her having faith in Him.
“It’s absolutely incredible how everything worked out like it did.”
Hite said the rain, which totaled more than 20 inches in some areas, began last Saturday and increased overnight. He recorded more than a foot in his rain gauge in Ninety-Six, west of Lake Greenwood. Reports show there have been at least 20 dams that failed, and 100 more remain under watch. Among the 300 roads and bridges closed is a 70-mile stretch of I-95. Rain hit again Saturday with the governor asking citizens not to drive.
Hite said he’s seen the affects of the devastation first-hand, and almost got stranded at his river cabin. While Hite and two friends cooked 1,000 chicken quarters for disaster relief, a man in his mid-50s walked up to him.
“ ‘Can I get something? I just lost my house and my automobile’,” Hite said. “For so many of these people, it’s just gone. It’s so sad. Everybody who has texted me or called me asks if we’ve had any damage — just a little bit, but I feel blessed because there are people who literally lost everything.”
Hite was at his cabin about a mile down from the Lake Greenwood dam when the floodgates were opened, sending walls of water around his property. He called his wife to come see how high it was, and their son drove her out in his semi-lifted Toyota Tundra.
“They looked around, and thought this is neat,” he said. “It’s really running hard, so I said we better leave. I’ve got a duck pond dam to get in and asked them if water was coming over the road.”
Natalie told him not yet, but she heard gurgling through the drainage pipe. That sent Hite in rush-out-of-there mode. Hite parked his Tacoma on a high spot and they all risked a run through the water over the dam in the bigger truck.
“The water was running backwards,” Hite said. “It had come up so fast, it had a bottleneck a half-mile downstream. It was pushing the water back, really, really fast, like it was coming down a waterfall. It was ripping.
“My wife said, ‘Oh my goodness, this is bad.’ I told my son — he was driving — ‘Get across here and hurry.’ We were within 10 minutes of being trapped.”
Hite went back several hours later and water over his dam was 8 feet deep. He said they would have been trapped for several days. Murray Lake is the next reservoir down from Greenwood, and he said its floodgates were opened for the first time he could remember.
“Water is something you certainly should respect,” he said. “I think, since I make my living on the water, I do have a good sense about respecting water. The power of walls of water being released from gates is just incredible.”
There’s still concern of more flooding, including further down the watershed. The rivers weren’t expected to crest near coastal towns until this weekend. That includes Georgetown, which will host the Elite Series at Winyah Bay next April.
“There’s going to be fish washed, moved around. I don’t think anybody can say exactly what’s going to happen,” Hite said. “We never had this much rain. People described it as a 100-year flood. The Governor said we haven’t had this much rain in a thousand years. Who knows when those walls are going to stop?
“That’s what really hurt Columbia. The lakes that were 100- to 300-acre lakes, the dams starting breeching and there was a domino effect. All those fish moved somewhere from those small lakes. It might make it better; they all might wash down toward the coast where we’re going to have that Elite event. Typically, this stuff is not good for fishing.”