Authorities remove Jeep that for weeks was stuck in the Chattahoochee River
A battered, mud-crusted Jeep that for weeks rested in the Chattahoochee River below the Dillingham Street Bridge is there no more.
Assisted by divers with the Columbus Department of Fire & Emergency Medical Services, two tow truck drivers with Griffin & Griffin Towing of Columbus pulled the wrecked vehicle from the riverbank in front of the Phenix City Amphitheater on Monday afternoon.
After a month or more in the water, the Jeep was becoming a social media fixture, with people posting photos and jokes, and wondering why it remained in there so long.
“It’s been there for weeks! How has it not been removed by now?” one resident remarked on a local Facebook post that had photos of the vehicle.
Daniel Macon, deputy chief of operations for Columbus Fire & EMS, said a series of heavy rains came after the Jeep became stuck in the river, making the currents swirling around it too dangerous for rescue workers.
The vehicle presented no immediate public danger, where it came to rest, so authorities waited for the river to drop to retrieve it, he said.
The operation was tricky, because the Jeep was not where a tow truck’s cable could reach it on a straight line. Charlie Griffin, owner of Griffin & Griffin Towing, said his crew had to back a medium-duty wrecker down a concrete ramp leading to the water, run a cable from the truck to a “snatch box” pulley system anchored to a tree on the riverbank, and run the cable from there to the Jeep, so the line formed an “L” shape.
Once divers attached the cable to the Jeep, the wrecker was able to pull the Jeep north, parallel to the riverbank, until it reached a point where the line could run directly from the tow truck to the Jeep without the pulley system. Then the wrecker easily pulled it up to the concrete ramp.
The crew thought they had only a few hours to do the work, as the river was expected to rise again Monday afternoon. They had the cable hooked up by 12:30 p.m., were pulling the Jeep north 20 minutes later, stopped to reconfigure the tow line shortly after 1 p.m., and had the Jeep out of the water by 1:45.
Authorities at the scene were unsure how the Jeep got into the river.
Phenix City Police Chief Ray Smith told the Ledger-Enquirer in a phone interview Monday that a local fisherman named Christopher Nelson parked the vehicle in the amphitheater parking lot on March 19 and walked down to the river to fish. The Jeep afterward slipped into gear, jumped the curb, and started rolling down the riverbank, missing any obstacle that might have blocked its way as it proceeded into the river, the chief said. Then the river current caught it and pushed it south to a sandy bank below the bridge, Smith said.
Chief Macon said the vehicle more easily could have been removed had it been submerged in deep, flat water, where divers could have attached floats to it, floated it to the surface and pulled it to shore. Instead it was tucked away in a spot that was difficult to reach with heavy equipment, as workers had to be careful not to damage paving and brickwork around the Phenix City Riverwalk and the amphitheater.
Griffin said his crew had to use a medium-duty wrecker because a heavier one could have damaged the concrete ramp leading to the water.
Asked whether he knew who ultimately would be responsible to salvaging the Jeep, which is expected to be a total loss, Griffin said, “Not yet.”
This story was originally published April 25, 2022 at 4:21 PM.