WASHINGTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) — To say Levi Mulder and Brent Koeninger were in the right place at the right time the afternoon of Sept. 27, 2024 is a major understatement.

The pair of Oklahoma-based first responders found themselves in a boat on the swollen, raging Nolichucky River just as Vicki Hunter clung to the porch of her floating house, screaming for help.

Hunter called out the men by name when News Channel 11 interviewed her five days after the pair saved her life in a miraculous rescue. Nearly a year later, the seconds that stretched out like minutes were still seared into Mulder’s mind like they’d just happened.

Mulder, who works for the Norman Fire Department, and Koeninger received two prestigious awards back home for the type of rescue most first responders will never experience.

“When I tell the story to somebody that really understands it, that’s done the rescues or been in the training and done all that … they’re kind of mind-blown for a minute, like ‘that sounds pretty crazy’ – and it was,” Mulder told News Channel 11 in an early September Zoom interview.

‘Everything was stacked against that working out’

Mulder and a search and rescue unit from Oklahoma Task Force One weren’t even supposed to be in Northeast Tennessee that day. The group was headed for Western North Carolina but road closures diverted them to the Embreeville/Lamar area of Washington County near the intersections of Highway 107 and Highway 81.

That’s where Mulder met Koeninger, who works in a different city, for the first time. As the team arrived, a local swiftwater rescue volunteer group asked if they could help.

“We deployed a boat and two guys that went out and started pulling people from houses,” Mulder said.

Those rescues were occurring at houses that were still on their foundations. At the same time, numerous houses were floating down the river, and local rescuers said they’d noticed a couple with people on them.

“They came back to us and they said, ‘hey, this house didn’t fall apart. It’s stuck against the trees down here.'”

That was Hunter’s house, which both she and her husband Jerry were still clinging to. Mulder said with the river carrying massive amounts of debris and running so swiftly they couldn’t even keep pace with the current in their motorboat, the odds of rescuing someone from an unmoored house were close to nil.

“It’s one of those deals that, you know, everything was stacked against that working out from the start,” he said.

“It didn’t make sense that we were even there, and now we have the stuff there to make this rescue if it’s possible for her house to hold together and then for us to get around there and have time.”

‘That’s not a person, that’s this house coming apart’

Mulder, who was operating the boat, maneuvered into an eddy behind the house so the boat could be held in place. The pair heard banging, and Mulder thought the person was probably in the attic where people often end up in floating houses.

“I thought, we need to peel this siding away and start prying this apart,” he said. “And the banging got a little louder and louder, and it didn’t take long to realize, like, that’s not a person, that’s this house coming apart.”

The event, which Hunter also described vividly last Oct. 2, continued to get more fraught. The river was filled with what Mulder called “strainers” — pieces of debris in swift water that get caught up in trees.

“You don’t want to be anywhere near a strainer, because you get stuck in them and you go under. Everything behind us was a strainer.”

It was the kind of situation that in which Mulder, in hindsight, could have chosen a different option.

“It’s fairly safe to go right back to shore. It’s calmer water, get out of the way of the house. But in that moment, we make decisions on the fly sometimes and some of them may not be the smartest. Some of them may not make sense. But in that moment, I just made the call.”

Mulder eased their boat into the swift water and positioned it for the slimmest chance of success if the house came apart.

“There’s got to be one more chance we can give her to to potentially grab her,” Mulder said.

“We couldn’t even maintain speed to stay alongside the house as it was coming apart. We were actually losing ground, but staying pointed upstream.”

When the house came apart to the point Hunter had to make a decision — she was on the opposite side of the house from Mulder — she jumped. Somehow, she passed through the water under the house and came up about 15 to 20 yards straight upstream from Mulder and Koeninger.

“There was no way we could have gone six feet to the left and pick her up or six feet to the right to pick her up. It had to be right there. And she just came up and we saw, and I hollered at Brent and he turned around and grabbed her. I mean, it was super quick. You can imagine how fast this water is coming by.”

Mulder said thinking about the experience is “mind-blowing” even a year later.

“It’s just so many events that stacked together to even put us in that one spot was pretty incredible,” he said.

He doesn’t think he would have made a different decision, although he knows his wife would have wanted him to.

“Pushing out and getting farther out into the swift water and putting the broke up house between us and safety was something that maybe not the best decision, but it was the only decision I felt that she had. So that’s why we went that way.”

Not out of the woods, or the trees

The trio was still far from safety when Mulder realized the boat’s motor wasn’t working. He figured something had happened to the propeller, and the three worked and worked to try and access it while avoiding hazards.

“Vicki was a trooper. Talk about not being a victim. She was working just as hard as we were the whole time. You know, she’s grabbing on to stop, pull and whatever we needed or we asked, she did it.”

Mulder reckons for the next 10 to 15 minutes, with “a constant barrage of things coming downstream,” they worked to fix the boat. Meanwhile, a tree they’d taken shelter behind kept leaning further and further toward them.

“All I could think of was, ‘man, if this thing goes over on top of the boat we’re not staying in the boat anymore, and our options are not great behind us,’ We did have radio contact with our task force. A lot of them had moved back down and, you know, they were trying to set up to figure out how to get us out of this.”

Somehow, the boat got loose into open water and Mulder got to the propeller. It was wrapped in a hooded sweatshirt that was waterlogged. He got it loose and the propeller was warped badly. Mulder decided not to take time to swap it out for a spare and just use muscle power.

“Vicki and Brent and I, all of us were just pulling for all we were worth. Everything you could grab, we’d drag it and pull it over a tree branch.

The boat finally got into truly open water and after what seemed like only seconds, the group was safe on shore.

“I gave her a hug and it didn’t last very long because the volunteer fire department rescue group that was there informed her that her husband had fallen off the house,” Mulder said.

Jerry Hunter hadn’t survived.

“She gets that news right after we got out of the water, which was just heartbreaking. After that, I believe a neighbor took her into her house and took care of her. I didn’t see her again.”

Mulder said he’s proud that he was able to be where he was, when he was, and do what he did — and that those moments will always be clear in his mind.

“I think about Vicki every once in a while. I wonder what she’s doing, I wonder how she’s doing. She’s going to always be embedded into my brain, what she looks like and how she sounds even, because you’re kind of hyper-focused in that moment of what’s going on. You really do take that stuff in.”