Almost exactly a year ago, EMTs working in Clendenin felt helpless as flood waters ravaged their town and they couldn't respond to the emergency calls.
"We kept getting radio calls, but there wasn't much we could do. We were stuck, too," said Ben Bush, who has worked as an EMT in Clendenin for the past two years. "It was sad to see so many people lose so much in basically a half-hour period."
Bush remembered getting a call at 8 p.m. from a woman not too far from the station who fell and fractured her femur as she and her husband were trying to move their cars to higher ground.
"We responded and treated her as best as possible, but we couldn't transport," he said. "There was just too much water."
Bush stayed with the woman for 17 hours, he said, until he and the other EMTs moved her to a higher, flat-topped hill in a yard close by and high enough to be out of the flood waters' path. The next day the National Guard sent a helicopter to pick up Bush, the woman and the other EMTs and brought them to Yeager Airport, were medical staff was waiting.
On Tuesday, Clendenin's ambulance station hosted its grand reopening, in a newly renovated and repaired building.
Bush's call to the woman with the injured femur was one of the last he and his coworkers took from their EMS station on Koontz Avenue, which sits just a few blocks off the Elk River. Flood waters filled the station not long after, rising about seven feet in the interior of the brick building and leaving visible mold on the walls after it drained.
"We were victims too. My heart sunk [after the flooding]," said Tim Barrett, a captain and shift commander for Kanawha County EMS services who was on duty during the worst of last June's floods.
Following the flooding, the Clendenin EMS station was out of commission due to the damage, and services began running through Elkview, which lies about 10 miles further from the town. This led to increased response times for all calls in Clendenin, a dangerous risk, Barrett said, when it comes to ambulances, and one he is happy will no longer exist.
"This reopening is huge - it's a big deal. It'll reduce response time, and in life and death situations, every minute counts," Barrett said.
The Clendenin EMTs worked out of Elkview for seven or eight months, Bush said, before the Methodist Church that sits a block down the road offered to let them use an annex building to run calls out of. Still, the full service wasn't there.
"People were very worried we weren't coming back," said Glenn Summers, Clendenin resident and treasurer for the Kanawha County Ambulance Authority Board. "This [reopening] is just another piece of the puzzle back together. We're getting back to full strength."
The newly-renovated building features all the same amenities as the old one - a fully functional kitchen, a rec room with couches and a TV and rooms with beds so EMTs can rest during overnight shifts. Following the flooding, Summers said people involved with the Ambulance Authority, Kanawha County Commission and the EMTs worked endlessly to rid the building of mold and get renovations under way so they could reopen as soon as possible and provide the comfort and security of their presence to Clendenin residents.
Now, with the station reopened Wayne Harmon, paramedic supervisor for Kanawha County, said their main focus is moving forward, just like they've been doing in the last year, a sentiment that resonated with Summers,
"The flood was a year ago, but we're not thinking about that anymore," Summers said. "Every day is one more day past that. This shows that the town is ready to recover, we're focused on moving forward."
Reach Caity Coyne at caitlin.coyne@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5100 or follow @caitycoyne on Twitter