Snow recovery vehicles (update P5)

[Mystery Machine]

Anyone who know St Michaels Hill in Clifton will know how steep it is.

When I got there this morning I was greeted by a truck stuck completely sideways halfway down the hill. When I offered a tow, the driver, along with all the 'watchers' laughed....lickle ickle Delica pulling a big truck up a steep hill in the snow/ice?? NO CHANCE!!

The cheers, hollers and general applause soon got very loud as my little motor pulled the truck all the way to the top without a struggle. The driver of the truck just couldn't believe it!

I wish I'd got some pics of the actual recovery (I was too busy towing!) but there seemed to be a lot of camera phones appearing as I towed the truck to the top.

Gotta love the Delica:





You can just about make out the tow strap in the pics, but you can't see how slippery the road was (more snowy further down the hill) - I took these shots at the top after the recovery.

It was only after I'd got the truck to the top that the council turned up to start gritting the hill. (you can see one of them in the 2nd pic)

I'd also recovered a new Jag and an X5 who were both badly stuck and blocking roads. No pics of these though I'm afraid....

So come on then, lets see the recovery shots......

[grizz]

Nice one.

Think there is a song title in the pics.....

"Dirty Delica !!! " Sung to Michael Jacksons "Dirty Diana"


Off to work now .

[pictonroad]

haha, brilliant, you love rescue missions in the high rise beastie!!

[Mystery Machine]

Feb 5, 2009 9:31:49 GMT grizz said:

Nice one.

Think there is a song title in the pics.....

"Dirty Delica !!! " Sung to Michael Jacksons "Dirty Diana"

;D ;D

I forgot to add - according to the driver, the truck was fully loaded and "weighs a bit" hence his hesitation when I offered a tow in my little van...

Did I tell you that I love Delica's? I love 'em just that little bit more now...

[Mystery Machine]

Feb 5, 2009 9:33:58 GMT pictonroad said:

haha, brilliant, you love rescue missions in the high rise beastie!!

It still amazes me how you know about that story?

I know it made the news, but that sort of thing gets forgotten so quickly amongst all the anti-4x4 propaganda.....

[danblez]

Hahah that's great and a very cool truck you have.

[Paul H]

Feb 5, 2009 9:37:56 GMT Mystery Machine said:

Feb 5, 2009 9:33:58 GMT pictonroad said:

haha, brilliant, you love rescue missions in the high rise beastie!!

It still amazes me how you know about that story?

I know it made the news, but that sort of thing gets forgotten so quickly amongst all the anti-4x4 propaganda.....

You can't drop a reference like that and then not tell the rest of the story! ;D

[captainwow]

Yeh,come on,spill...

[UtterPiffle]

Feb 5, 2009 10:16:51 GMT Paul H said:

You can't drop a reference like that and then not tell the rest of the story! ;D

Quite!

[Mystery Machine]

OK guys - I'm just trying to find the original post on a Canadian Delica forum....(of all places!!)

[Mystery Machine]

OK -I have to apologise about the comments, please remember this was me explaining it to a bunch of guys the other side of the world!

I've just taken this as a quote direct from the Canadian website, so apologies about the length of it....

I guess I'm posting this up to show all you guys out there how capable these vehicles really can be when pushed to the limits!

I haven't posted some of these pictures up anywhere on UK forums because my good friend (Damo) lost his house in the floods of last year and these pictures would be a bit painful for him to see......he still hasn't been able to move back in after 7 months and it will be some time yet!

Back in July 2007 massive floods hit certain areas of the UK. Where I live in Bristol, we were lucky - but Gloucester (pronounced Glosster) got hit pretty bad! Being only an hour away from me and knowing my good friend lived there I couldn't just go to bed knowing that people were losing everything when parked on my drive was a vehicle that may be able to help.

I headed out with a flask of tea (typical Brit!), a few towing straps and a tank full of fuel.

After 4 hrs of fighting through gridlock on the motorways and choas on the roads of Gloucester, I was quickly summoned to the side of the road by a policeman on foot who was directing traffic away from the floods. He radioed through to his colleagues to the let them know that a 'capable vehicle' had arrived on the scene!

Before long I was being directed by the police around various parts of the floods to try and recover ambulances/police cars etc...that had been stuck in the deep water. One particular 'mission' was to recover an elderly couple from an ambulance that was trapped in deep water. After pulling the ambulance out of the floods, I had to relay the old couple to the hospital for treatment (along with the medics/ambulance crew) and then take them back home so there was space on the ward for more emergenices.

After a long night of recovering people and vehicles, I headed home.

The next day saw more rain and even more flooding! Within minutes I was back on my way to Glouester and straight to my friend Damo's house to try and help him evacuate because the water was rising more and more.

Most of the roads near his house were underwater....the road shown below seemed passable until I got a few hundred yards into it and found the water gushing in throught the front door (the footwell of the Mystery Machine is a LONG way from the ground!) I had to turn back and try another way!

The road to Damo's....the water to the side is actually the river severn!!


A few hundred yards in and I knew this was getting too deep!!!! I'm now driving through the river severn....


After finally finding a route that was passable, I made it to his house only to find most of his land underwater!!!

This used to be his garden, paddock and stables!!


This used to be his drive!!


A bit later and the water was a LOT deeper. The fence & gates are now completely underwater and the only fence you can see is where it has pulled out of the ground and is floating!


I got my waders on and started helping with the evacuation. Within no time Damo had a phonecall from a friend (the landlord of the local pub) who lived a few miles away....his wife was 10 days overdue and their pub was completely cut off from all sides! An atttempt had been made to rescue them eariler but the rescue land rover had got washed away in the current of the flood water! (driver got out unharmed)

The rescue helicopter could recover the husband, but they couldn't help the wife because the harness would be/could be harmful to the preganant lady and her baby! He was ringing Damo to see if he had any ideas how they could get out of the pub??

That was it - I was off to see what I could do accompanied by my friend Paul who had joined me in the evacuation mission.

We drove down to the crossroads 1.5 miles from the pub to be faced with this:


This view was the start of 1.5 miles of deep water, strong cross currents and no idea if we would make it through! Just past the white house you can see the water change from being smooth....this is where the rapid currents started sweeping across what used to be the road! We were about to drive into the biggest flood Gloucester had ever seen and we were going to be in it for quite some time! Please remember that is the the river severn we're talking about and quite an angry river severn at that.

Look closely at the left hand side of the picture and you can make out the 4ft fence sloping into the water.....this gives some indication of how deep the water was going to be! The road doesn't flatten out until it reaches the white house!!! :shock:

After a minute considering what I was about to do, I just engaged 4WD and went for it! These pics really do NOT show the true force of the water cutting across the road or how deep we were....

To say that I was scared was an understatement!






It took us 10 mins to cover the 1.5 miles to the pub. The whole time I was wrestling with the steering to try and keep the Delica from being bucked all over the road. Water was nearly up to my knees inside the cab and the rear of the car was filling with water!

Most of the way there, the water was up to the windshield on the car. Sometimes it was lapping well over the windshield!!! (just to put it into perspective - the bottom of the windshiled of the Mystery Machine is exactly 5' 4" from the ground! (1.62m!!)

Considering I didn't have a snorkel, I do not know how the car made it through.....but it did.....AND back again with the pregnant woman and another woman & hers kids who were also stranded! The normal wading depth is just above the tire on an L300.....but even with 33" tyres I was WAY over this limit and the car still kept going!

All I can say is THANK YOU Mitsubishi for creating such an awesome machine and also THANK YOU Mystery Machine for being such a dependable vehicle that has show its true colours in times of crisis!

Hopefully none of us will ever have to face this sort of situation - but if you do, I very much doubt you'd be any better off in any other vehicle??

So there you go! It did make the press, yet only a few days later it was back to 'Anti 4x4' stories again. I hate the injustice....

[skamanfrank]

Without a snorkel?!?!?! How the chuffing hell?! Awesome story and massive respect to you for going out of your way to help others (and photographing it en route!)

[captainwow]

Massive props to you chap!!Would have been a bit of a brown trouser moment for me!

[Paul H]

Excellent work sir & great write-up!! Just had a search for news reports but couldn't find them

[skoda_norman]

Fantastic rescue missions on both counts.

Hope your mate gets everything sorted, they look like horrific floods.

[Seth]

Awesome work then and now!

[captainwow]

Feb 5, 2009 11:55:50 GMT skoda_norman said:

Fantastic rescue missions on both counts.

Hope your mate gets everything sorted, they look like horrific floods.

They were terrible!!
Me and SWMBO came back from Tenerife to find half my village underwater,and one of the main bridges in Evesham,which is a fair way above the river,the road was covered in water.Unreal!

[dollywobbler]

Crikey. Feel good factor! Not had to recover anyone today, though I almost had to stop and push a Vectra that kindly pulled over to let me get past on a narrow lane, but then found himself a bit stuck. Good driver though - no panic, a bit of fore and aft and he was away.

[michiel]

Feb 5, 2009 11:59:19 GMT Seth said:

Awesome work then and now!

+1!

[Deleted]

this might put the evesham floods into perspective....

that road that looks to be floating onthe water is oneof the main bridges in evesham, UNDERNEATH it is a row of arches easliy big enough to drive a car under infact standing under it you would struggle to touch the tops of them, and thats the shallow end...

have got a pic somewhere of the old cast iron swings in the play park and all that can be seen is two bow waves coming from the balls on the tops of the posts