Higher Authority Given Credit for Rescue

It has long been known that God looks after children, drunks and boaters, and recently bass fisherman Eddie Cook confirmed the rescue ability of the Almighty. Cook was fishing in an all-night bass tournament and either didn't know how close he was to a high dam or thought it might be a good place to find a record catch. In either case it seems he was nowhere to be found when the Higher Authority was handing out brains. The 2009 USCG Accident Report notes that 7 boats went over dams last year and there were 7 deaths.

Eddie Cook's boat can be seen at the bottom of 128' high Burton Dam on Lake Burton in Rabun County, Ga. The bass boat made it over in fine shape. But where is poor Eddie?

This story re-published courtesy The Cherokee Scout, Cherokee County, NC.--

Clayton, Ga. - It was 10 minutes to 6 a.m. Saturday, and Freddie Cook had been fishing in an all-night bass tournament on Lake Burton in Rabun County when he received a frantic call for help from his brother.

“Fred, I need your help,” Eddie Cook said. “The back of my boat’s gone over Burton Dam.”

Eddie also had been fishing in a Hiwassee River Bass Club fishing tournament but was trapped aboard his 17-foot bass boat on the precipice of one of the dam’s spillways. “I got down there to him, and I seen that he was scared and I was scared,” Freddie Cook said. “The boat was hanging over the dam. I threw him a rope, and tied the rope to his boat. I told him, ‘Now, I’m gonna pull you out.’ ”

Brother Freddie to Rescue

Freddie Cook gave his engine some throttle, but his brother’s boat didn’t budge.

“So I told him, ‘Trim your big motor up, Eddie,’ ” Freddie Cook said.

Freddie Cook gave the boat more throttle, but instead of pulling his brother’s boat free he merely dislodged it, only to have the rope break and send the boat hurtling through the spillway.

“Eddie jumped toward me,” Freddie said. “My boat was going into the spillway and I tried to throw him a rope, and he hollered, ‘Help me Freddie!’ ”

The memory of seeing his brother swept through the spillway caused Freddie Cook to pause and collect himself.

“I couldn’t see him any more,” he added, “and I said, ‘God, you’ve got to help him. I can’t.’ ”

Freddie Cook fought his boat free of the current, and once safe he called 911 to report his brother’s boat had gone over the dam. Assuming his brother had followed his boat as it plunged 128 feet, Freddie Cook hiked to below the dam, where he began to search in the vain hope that his brother could have survived the fall. When rescue workers arrived, they did the same.

On a mission from God: Rescue of Eddie Cook had need of some human intervention.

Eddie Disappears

“I was down below the dam looking for him,” Freddie Cook said. “I spent about an hour to an hour and a half praying to God for him to be alive.”

Then rescuers on the other side of the river heard screaming. Where it was coming from was impossible to know.

“Then a shoe came out of the spillway, and we heard the screaming again,” said Marty Dixon of the Rabun County Rescue Squad. “Then we heard screaming again and another shoe came out of the water ... That’s when we finally were able to pinpoint where it was coming from.”

“I was in the river looking for him,” Freddie Cook said, “and there was a guy on the other side, the rescue , and he hollered, ‘Is your name Freddie?’”

When Freddie responded yes, the rescuer said, “Your brother Eddie is hollering that he’s all right ... ‘Tell Freddie I’m fine.’ ”

“Well, I just jumped for glory,” Freddie Cook said.

Had Eddie Cook not been able to yell above the sound of the water, or had he not thought to use his shoes to signal his location, rescuers may not have found him.

“He had actually got swept under the spillway gate,” Dixon said, “and he was sitting on the ledge, and the water was spilling over him to where you couldn’t see him.”

It was all in a day's work for the undamaged fiberglass bass boat.

Miracle at Work

How he had come to land there is best told by Eddie Cook.

Once the rope his brother was trying to pull him to safety with broke, Eddie Cook said he “ran up on the bow and dove in. I couldn’t swim against the force of that water, so I started trying to swim sideways to get to one of those columns. I missed the column and went over the dam.

“As I was going over, I spotted this cable and grabbed it. The water pushed me down the cable and I hit a pulley, which stopped me there for a while. I was hanging on, and the water was about to drown me ... and I said, ‘Lord, I’ve got to turn loose. I can’t hang on anymore.’ And God pushed my face through that rushing water, put my hand on a beam and set me on that concrete on my knees. And that’s what happened.”

Summing up the harrowing experience, Eddie Cook said, “It wasn’t my strength that helped me. It wasn’t my strength that pulled me through that water. It was my God, performing a miracle.”

When Freddie Cook was asked his final thoughts on the experience, he said, “If you’ve got a brother or family member, you need to hug them and tell them that you love them because you can be gone in just a matter of seconds.”

He paused for a moment, then added, “God performed a miracle over at Lake Burton Saturday morning.”

Both Cook brothers had praise for the Rabun County Rescue Squad.

“They were terrific,” Freddie Cook said. “They were absolutely great. They knew what they were doing.”

“It was a dangerous situation,” Dixon said. “It was a very successful operation and a very safe operation, and at the end of the day everybody walked away.”