Matthew Higgins said he was putting together playground equipment at his granddaughter’s school when he got the call: There was a fire near the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway. He got in his car, he recalled in an interview, and drove to the top of the mountain.
After four days of working to protect the railroad, and another few days later, the incline railway director and CARTA employee of three-plus decades was standing in a boardroom, receiving an award created to honor the extraordinary leadership officials say he demonstrated as his team worked to protect a historic Chattanooga landmark.
“When fire threatened our beloved Lookout Mountain railway, we witnessed something remarkable,” said Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority Chief of Staff Scott Wilson at the Thursday meeting. “Our entire Incline Railway team didn’t just do their job. They became heroes.”
With that statement, Wilson was honoring 12 members of the railway team who received the Ambassador Award that the CARTA Board gives out monthly, though usually not to multiple people. The cohort helped protect the rail line from the wildfire, did all else that was asked of them and remained on watch for days after the blaze broke out, exemplifying what it means to be a CARTA employee, “putting service above self,” Wilson said.