After 4½ hours, woman rescued from Fox

Bernadette Manuel has last week's storms to thank and blame for the cold Tuesday morning she spent in the Fox River and the fact that she survived the ordeal relatively unscathed.

Manuel, a 48-year-old woman from Carpentersville, was walking along the Fox around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday when she slipped and fell into the floodwaters, she later told firefighters.

Manuel was carried downstream, about 150 yards south of the Fox River Shores boat launch, where she was able to swim over to a tree that had fallen into the water after Thursday's storms.

She pulled herself up onto the tree, where she sat for the next 4½ hours while her legs dangled in the cold, fast-moving current.

A man passing by on a bike path heard Manuel yelling for help just after 7 a.m. The Carpentersville Fire Department received the call at 7:03 a.m., and by 7:10 a.m., firefighters were on the scene and had established voice contact with the woman.

Between 20 and 25 firefighters from Carpentersville, East Dundee, West Dundee and the Rutland-Dundee Fire Protection District were on the scene. Three boats were launched, with two more boats and teams of divers ready just in case.

Carpentersville firefighters Marty Gruber, Perry Lynch and Pat Gillespie were on the boat that rescued Manuel. The rescuers said conditions were dangerous because of the high water and rapid current.

"It was the worst conditions we could think about being in the water," Lynch said.

But they had trained for water rescues as recently as Monday, and that training came in handy Tuesday.

"We did what we were trained to do. Our little boats did what they were designed to do," Lynch said.

Despite the danger, they went downstream, handed Manuel a lifejacket and brought her back upstream to the boat landing by 7:22 a.m., maneuvering around branches knocked loose by the storms.

Although the rescue went well, firefighters said things could have gone very differently if Manuel hadn't been able to reach the log or if the rescue attempt had failed.

"This lady's actually very lucky," Gillespie said. "Had she fallen in before we had gotten her, there's a very strong chance she would have ended up in the dam."

Manuel had no visible injuries and was released Tuesday after being treated at Sherman Hospital in Elgin.

Manuel's family said she declined to comment about the episode.