''CR-1 is dead in the water,'' the radio crackled.
The voice on the scanner was talking about a tall and stubby Cincinnati fire truck designed for crash-rescue at Lunken Airport, with enough ground clearance to parallel park on top of a Chevette. But as it crept into four feet of water on Kellogg Avenue, the Ohio River climbed into the cab and soaked the engine until it steamed like a Delta Queen calliope.
Watching firefighters battle too much water is like watching cops arrest people for stopping at red lights. It's all backward. I half expected the guys in high boots and tan canvas to fight water with fire, using hoses like flame-throwers to drive the river-run-amuck back into its bed.
''To tell the truth,'' said Cincinnati Fire Chief Tom Steidel, ''they live for this kind of thing. They love to be tested and this is the ultimate test.''
I was tagging along with Chief Steidel for a couple of hours at the end of Flood Week, to see what it looked like on the other side of all those police barricades, where streets became boat ramps and neighborhoods were marinas.
The way it looked was like Venice, Ohio, with pontoon boats instead of gondolas. The way it looked was like the people who had the least to start with lost the most. The way it looked was that floods mainly ruin folks who might gladly move to a trailer park on higher ground and take their chances with tornadoes.
At a Red Cross center in California, where flooded-out families killed time waiting to get back home and discover the worst, Community Council President Diane Havey said her second biggest problem was too many gawkers clogging the streets for drive-by Kodak moments.
''The biggest problem has not come yet,'' she said. ''That's when they get back home and see how bad it is. That's when the emotions will run high. Sometimes I look at their eyes now and see the hope and I just lose it.''
From the comfort of your car, you can hardly tell now that the neighborhood was flooded. The hands-gripping-hands that pulled people out of the flood, gave them shelter, food and clothing and helped them clean up and return to their mud-caked homes, are gradually slipping apart.
We're going back to normal.
But for awhile there, extraordinary acts of courage, compassion and kindness were almost as routine as canoes at stop signs.
When Darell Hamilton, 84, passed out and took a fall at his home on Kellogg Avenue, across from Coney Island, he called 911. Cincinnati firefighters rushed to launch a small johnboat and found him in ''fragile condition,'' with a possible broken hip and open wounds.
They sent in CR-1 - but the truck had to back out before it was became permanently stranded, half-submerged until the flood receded.
So they called in an AirCare helicopter to take him to University Hospital. But when it arrived, the helicopter pilot had to circle like a 747 at O'Hare. He couldn't land next to the house, where firefighters had rushed to clear a landing zone.
''There were two problems,'' said Dr. Randall Lewis, who was aboard. ''There was debris, plus the overhead wires were too close.''
So the AirCare crew landed on a closed ramp from northbound I-275, and the firefighters strapped Mr. Hamilton onto a stretcher, then delivered him to Dr. Lewis and the AirCare helicopter by boat.
''He had passed out, but there were no broken bones,'' Dr. Lewis said later.
As injured flood, fire and crash victims go, it was not that bad - unless you were the 84-year-old man, living alone, who took a scary fall and suddenly realized he was surrounded by water, with no way out to get help.
''He wasn't much for words - he just smiled,'' Dr. Lewis said.
There were probably hundreds of rescues like it during the flood, and many were more dramatic. AirCare averages about three a day at a cost of about $1,500 to $2,000 each. Only about 60 percent are reimbursed, an AirCare nurse said. She described the typical run as ''anywhere from 20 minutes to three hours,'' and usually featuring ''a lot of chaos, stress and anxiety.''
Cincinnati Fire Division's EMS crews have a budget of about $6 million and recover only half, said Chief Steidel. ''In a way, it's a social agency,'' he explained. ''Businesses don't make money by going to 13th and Vine to pick up a derelict with a gunshot wound. That's just not a good business decision.''
So the Fire Division does it.
No big deal. Unless it's your life strapped to a stretcher.
Mr. Hamilton, it turns out, was OK, thanks to lots of good people who do a tough and often thankless job day in and day out, come head-on-crash hell or flooding high water.
They live for disasters so the rest of us don't die in them.
As the flood waters receded, they left behind a lot of ugly wreckage. But if you look close, they also exposed some pretty heroic human spirit.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
