Firefighter says car rescue a team effort

Joshua Goebel is a hero.

Although if you talk to the 26-year-old firefighter from the Gilman Fire Department, he is quick to downplay his role and build up others.

Goebel and his wife Stephanie, along with their year-old son Jack, were picking up a vehicle from a mechanic in Stanley on the night of October 31. They were traveling on CTH H, which forms the border between Taylor and Chippewa counties.

“We saw lights swerve across the road,” he said, and remarked to his wife wondering if it had been a four-wheeler with the way it headed off the road.

When they came upon the scene they found that it was a vehicle that had gone off the road and down into the swamp there. Goebel pulled over right away.

“When I got out of my car, all I could hear was screaming and crying,” he said.

He didn’t hesitate and ran down into the ditch to help people get out of the water and get up on the road. He was joined by another passing motorist named Cole Marks.

There was a person on top of the car crying for help and afraid to go into the rising water.

Goebel told Marks he was going back up to his car to try to get ahold of 9-1-1 since there was no service in the low ditch level. His wife had been able to place the call. Goebel, who works in Chippewa Falls, routinely keeps his firefi ghting turnout gear in his vehicle in case anything comes about on his way home so that he is ready for it. “I always have my gear with me,” he said.

He put it on with hopes of increasing visibility with the steady traffic going down the road.

Meanwhile, Marks had stripped down to his shorts and entered the water and got the other person off the roof of See HEROS on page 4 the vehicle. Goebel praised Marks’ heroism for going into the icy cold water and that he knew how cold it must have been from getting wet helping others out of the water.

Goebel said Marks left right away after helping to get the people from the water.

Goebel said another motorist in a truck stopped who happened to be a nurse. She was able to check over the people who had been in the car and helped make sure they were OK and help them warm up.

“It was a team effort,” Goebel said. Firefighters from the Stanley Fire Department arrived on the scene not much later and were able to take over.

Goebel admitted to being pretty shaken up at the scene. “I had to calm myself down,” he said. He said when he saw the vehicle with almost the whole vehicle under water, his mind went to all the scenarios that could have happened. “What if it had flipped upside down?” he said, noting in that case, he said it probably would have been very difficult or impossible for the people inside to get out. As his mind was racing with all the potential ways it could have ended badly, he said that is where his training as a firefighter came in handy. “You have to calm yourself and assess the situation and do what you have to do,” Goebel said. “I was shaking pretty good when it was all said and done,” he said of his reaction after the incident. Note: Attempts to reach Marks for this story have been unsuccessful.