Search and rescue team reunited with victim they saved
Published: December 13, 2005
Joyce Morel choked back tears as 14 members of the Mississippi Highway Safety Patrol and U.S. Coast Guard filed into the living room of her daughters home here, each offering a hug and kiss. One trooper handed her a vase of roses; another presented her with a gold watch.
“Theyre my guardian angels,” said a sobbing Morel, who turned 83 earlier this month. “I wouldnt even be here if it wasnt for them.”
The last time the search-and-rescue team saw Morel, she was drenched with saltwater and covered in mud and bruises, barely conscious after Hurricane Katrina swept into Claremont Harbor, Miss., and destroyed everything she owned. With her diabetic son, Charlie, 56, Morel spent two days stuck in the attic of her Hancock County home until the roof collapsed.
The pair managed to survive the cave-in unharmed, working their way out of the rubble and situating themselves on what was left of the roof. The desperate son began to worry about his ailing mother as she increasingly became “dead weight” and drifted out of consciousness. But he contends their common devotion kept them both alive.
“If it wasnt for her, I wouldnt have made it. And if it wasnt for me, she wouldnt have made it, either,” he said. “We depended on each other.”
Still recovering and unable to even tear the wrapping paper from her gift, Morel said at Mondays reunion that she recalls very little from the rescue. Morel said she remembers the water lifting their family car as the hurricane moved ashore, then her son hastily pushing her into the attic and finally incomplete fragments of being airlifted out by the Coast Guard.
Sgt. Roy Fullerton, who led his team of Mississippi troopers into the Claremont Harbor area two days after Katrina made landfall, was able to fill in a few of the gaps.
“We had heard there might be people in the area, so we made our way down the street until we heard voices,” Fullerton said. “When we got there, they were in terrible shape. Ms. Morel, poor thing, was severely dehydrated and was black and blue from head to foot.”
The search-and-rescue team carried Morel for more than a mile in their arms, while also helping her son navigate the swampy terrain. Unable to contact a helicopter, one officer eventually used a can of spray paint to mark the top of a vehicle with “SOS.”
But it was an amateur ham radio operator who eventually led a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter to the Morels, according to Lt. Cmdr. Mark Hiigel, who was responsible for hoisting the pair up to safety in a rescue basket.
“That was our very first rescue,” said Hiigel, who is based out of the Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Ala.
It was also the first rescue for Fullerton and his team, after spending two days of doing nothing but recovering dead bodies.
“It completely re-energized me, just knowing someone is going to make it because of what we did. All it takes is making a difference in one persons life,” Fullerton said. “Im getting little chills up my spine right now talking about it.”
The Morels were transported to Gulfport Memorial Hospital, treated by doctors and eventually released. Since then, they have been living here in south Louisiana with family. But the process it took to find the Morels, months later for the December reunion, is an epic tale unto itself.
While the troopers had taken pictures of the elderly woman during their rescue, all of them were snapped from an angle that covered her face. Donna Mabus, a lobbyist for the Mississippi State Troopers Association, went as far as to have crime labs analyze the pictures, but to no avail.
“I wasnt going to take no for an answer,” she said.
Then Mabus tracked down the Coast Guard team and discovered Hiigle had also taken pictures of the woman who was rescued — and his images showed her face. They were distributed around Hancock County until a positive identification was made, and the first phone call to the Morels was placed two days before Thanksgiving.
While Morel said she doesnt remember the specific details of her very own “miracle,” and is still waiting for the federal government to find her a trailer to move into, life couldnt be better for her and her family.
“This is a good Christmas,” she said. “This is one of the best I ever had — just being alive.”
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