Resident expected to die while rescuing her dogs

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

SALEM — Mary Beth Gresko was in disbelief over what was happening to her.

Yes, the water was fast. Two days of steady rain had, by Monday, turned the normally placid creek in her front yard on West Pidgeon Road into a river about 50 feet wide.

But she had been braced, or so she thought, against the wall of a bridge over three pipes in a culvert under her driveway. She was reaching into the pipes to feel for one of her dogs, Carly, a young Lab she and her husband had just adopted Friday. The dog, who’d gotten out through a gate in the backyard, had been washed into one of them.

One moment, Gresko was standing in the rushing water, thinking she’d safeguarded herself from the current. In the next instant, the water snatched her and yanked her into the pipe.

“It’s like you get sucked in. It’s like a hydraulic,” she said, trying to find the words to describe the power of the flood.

She didn’t lose her footing, she said. She just got swept under. “You just don’t realize how strong it is.”

She expected to meet her death in the pipe. “I thought, Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening.”

What happened

Fortunately for Gresko, who works from home, she wasn’t there alone Monday. She had called her husband, Dale, earlier at his work to come to help her deal with water that was getting into their basement. He did so, and by 1 p.m., he was ready to leave again.

“When it was time for him to go, he didn’t know if he could get back across the flooded driveway,” she said.

While the couple was in the front yard considering that predicament, three of their five dogs wiggled and pushed their way through the back gate and joined them there.

The dogs were swimming and wrestling in the water, she said, when Carly got sucked under.

“All I could think of was, I’d just adopted this dog,” she said. She quickly set about trying to find her.

The torrent, about 6 feet deep, swept Gresko through 15 feet of pipe and another 15 feet of deep water before she came to a stop.

Carly ended up about 80 feet downstream, she said. Another of the dogs, a Lab named Butchie, got sucked through the pipe after Gresko.

Up for air

Dale Gresko ran to the other side of the pipe to try to find his wife. He had managed earlier to snag one of the wayward dogs and had put her in the house. He went back outside in time to see Carly, his wife and then Butchie get taken under. He said he ran to the other side of the pipe hoping to see them there. He saw Butchie first. Then, he spotted his wife struggling to stand up.

“I’m like, ‘Dale, get the dogs,’” she said, “And I was slowly making my way out of the creek.” Her right arm hung useless at her side.

After gathering up the other dogs and putting them inside, Dale drove her to the hospital. For the next eight weeks, she’ll wear a sling for a dislocated shoulder.

She’s also “banged up and bruised.” But she and Dale feel lucky. An obstruction in the pipe, they said, would have meant serious trouble.

“If there had been a log or something in there, no one could have pulled me out,” Mary Beth said. “The power of the water was unbelievable.”

starmack@vindy.com