At around 7:38 p.m. (PST), on February 13th, we received a recovery request from the northern area of Louisiana. We don’t have that many volunteers over there, but the few we have for sure are going the extra mile to help a lot of people.
We confirmed the information with the requester, Corey Rankin, who shared in the ticket he had a Dodge Ram 2500 4×4, lifted buried to the chassis in a creek crossing. He had his wife and kids in the vehicle and was resigned to spend the night since he couldn’t find any local help.
Once we had all the information, we started looking for volunteers. We submitted the request thru our Portal web-app and also invited members of our partner recovery website 4×4 rescue. So this time we tapped into Louisiana 4×4 rescue.
We used a 200 miles radius search and invited all volunteers we had. We also invited anybody to use the Copy feature in our lobby to share with any other groups they had access in the area.
While we kept tabs with the local groups we also kept Corey informed of the progress. Finally he told us a volunteer contacted him. The hero, Clifford Haney, saw our post to 4×4 rescue and although he was 2 hours away, he jumped into action. We invited Clifford to our lobby, he created a quick account and told us he was already driving. Throughout the recovery he kept the group informed. Other members also marked themselves as available in case he had any trouble.
Clifford has a 2 door Jeep with a winch. Sort of a light vehicle for trying to pull out a heavy vehicle like a Ram 2500. He arrive at the scene around 12:25 a.m. (CST) and reported that he was going to start winching. One hour later, he got them out, but a few moments later they got stuck again. So this recovery was pretty complicated. But eventually and thru a lot of hard work Clifford got the family out and safe. They didn’t have to spend the night in the woods. They finished around 2:32 a.m. (CST).
After that a bunch more volunteers joined our efforts in Louisiana. Consider becoming a volunteer, we all together can help a lot of people. Create your account here: members.offroadportal.org