Further To My Comments In The Off Duty Side....

[MalahatTwo7]

This was our last event......

Fiery two-vehicle crash blocks Malahat

Times Colonist Monday, June 14, 2004

A fiery two-vehicle crash on the Malahat Highway early Sunday evening was attended by a flock of ambulances, fire trucks and an air ambulance, blocking traffic for hours.

The condition of the victims was not known at press time.

Saanich resident David Moore said he saw the crash occur.

A GMC Blazer stopped -- "why I don't know" -- on the highway between the Malahat lookout and a turnoff for Shawnigan Lake Road, he said.

With that, a Ford pickup "came and whammed it right in the back end," said Moore.

"Both (vehicles) were fully engulfed in flames," said Moore. An air ambulance landed on the highway.

"Traffic was blocked off four ways to Sunday," said Moore.

JJM Maintenance dispatchers were told the accident occurred at the south end of the Shawnigan Lake turnoff and it was serious.

By late evening the highway was open to one-lane alternating traffic.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2004

We were paged at 1838, and the road was still restricted when we left at 2200. It took until nearly 2130 before the JJM Flagger crews that I had posted on in an earlier thread arrived to take over traffic for us. Apparently their "30 Minute" response time was somewhat unobtainable. Pfire and I worked with the ambulance crews on the family in the Jimmy. Mom and Dad are doing as well as can be expected, but there were two children, one age 2 and one age 9. We are not so sure about them, they were air-evac'd.... I can only hope and pray for them.

I also want to say a very heartfelt THANK YOU to those four persons who were there from start to finish. Their fast actions during the early stages of this event were very instrumental in getting the family out of the Jimmy. Thank you.

[MalahatTwo7]

As long as the information here is accurate regarding the patients this day just got a little better...

Family of four seriously hurt in fiery crash on Malahat

CH News, Times Colonist Monday, June 14, 2004

Two children are in critical condition and their parents in serious condition following a fiery two-vehicle crash on the Malahat Highway early Sunday evening.

The two-year-old boy and nine-year-old girl were heading back home to the west coast of Vancouver Island with their parents after a dinner in Sooke when a Ford pickup truck hit their Chevy Blazer from behind, causing both vehicles to burst into flames.

Witnesses at the crash scene helped pull the family of four from the Blazer.

The driver of the pickup wasn't seriously injured.

No names have been released in connection with the accident.

Saanich resident David Moore said he saw the crash occur.

A GMC Blazer stopped -- "why I don't know" -- on the highway between the Malahat lookout and a turnoff for Shawnigan Lake Road, he said.

With that, a Ford pickup "came and whammed it right in the back end," said Moore.

"Both (vehicles) were fully engulfed in flames," said Moore.

An air ambulance landed on the highway. A flock of ambulances and fire trucks blocked traffic for hours, but by late evening the highway was open to one-lane alternating traffic

Police believe the Blazer may have slowed or stopped on the highway due to mechanical problems.

Shawnigan Lake RCMP Cst. Norm Smith said it's too early to say who might be at fault, or if there is any fault.

"There may have been some speed involved, but to what extent, we're not quite sure yet," Smith said. "No alcohol or drugs are involved in this crash."

RCMP are asking witnesses to contact them with any information they might have about the crash.
© CH News, Times Colonist 2004

**PHOTO CREDIT: CREDIT: CH News
A witness to the crash used his digital camera to this photo of the accident scene after helping pull a family of four from their burning vehicle. ***This what we saw on arrival, and is only one of the two involved....***

[RspctFrmCalgary]

*This isn't Sheri but I'm (PFire) at her house*

I spoke to the hospital today, I'm working and was in the city so I stopped in. Mom has been discharged according to pt info, both kids are in PICU and holding their own at this moment (I spoke to the PICU nurse). From what pt info could tell me Dad was not admitted. I left a note for Mom telling her who I was and that we are all praying for the kids recovery. Sometimes it's just nice to know that there's someone pulling for you. I also left my number and said that if she wanted to at some point phone with an update that would be nice as we were all wondering how the kids were doing. I don't normally follow up on pt's as I'm generally done with them once they go in the ambulance; but I was so impressed by the Mom's incredible courage, she was calm and answered every question we asked her about her kids, herself, her husband, where everyone was seated in the vehicle etc. She was an excellent pt, she remained perfectly still, verbalized anything she felt we needed to know......it's not often that you get pt's that are as good as this in the face of tragedy. I hope that she does call at some point, it certainly would be nice to know how the family is doing.

[MalahatTwo7]

'Everybody did their part and saved these people'

Lindsay Kines Times Colonist June 15, 2004

A young Nitinat Lake family owes their lives to a group of strangers who smashed windows, braved toxic fumes, and pulled them from a burning wreck on the Malahat.

"I thought enough to take off my nylon jacket and I just jumped in there and started doing what I could do.

"The alternative to not doing it, was too terrible to think about, so I had to," said 44-year-old Eric Pittman Monday, still traumatized by the incident.

A two-year-old boy, nine-year-old girl and two adults were trapped in the GMC Jimmy after it was hit from behind by a pickup truck and burst into flames south of the Shawnigan Lake turnoff about 6:45 p.m. on Sunday.

David Saunders, 37, of Colwood was one of the first on the scene. He grabbed a rock, smashed a side window, and pulled a woman out.

"She continued to yell, 'My baby, my baby,' " Saunders recalled. "So I pulled her out, dragged her about 20 feet and ran back."

Back inside the burning Jimmy, he tried to pull out the baby's car seat, but it wouldn't budge as flames were shooting over the baby's head.

"So I was reaching around, trying to find the seat belt button, and I was able to detach that," Saunders said. "And I pulled him out and I just ran with him, because I thought the car was going to blow up."

Saunders, who had swallowed a bunch of smoke, held the baby, until a woman yelled at him that she was a nurse. "I handed the baby over to her and then I laid down."

By this time, others had arrived at the scene and were trying to extricate the nine-year-old girl who was hanging halfway out the rear window.

Pittman said the child appeared to be unconscious. She had no shirt, severe burns to her back, and her legs were caught between the front and back seats inside the crushed vehicle.

"It was really frustrating," said Pittman, a Victoria roofer and amateur photographer who was returning from Lake Cowichan when he came upon the crash.

"One of the guys, I forget his last name, but his name was Garth, he stuck his head in the vehicle and released the seat latch and that allowed for us to get the kid out."

A man was still trapped under the dashboard.

"You couldn't see in the vehicle," Pittman said. "It was total black smoke. You couldn't see; you couldn't breathe. You had to take a gulp of air, and grab and try and pull.

"We couldn't get him out, because as I discovered, when we pulled his left arm, actually all we were doing was wedging him farther under the dashboard.

"So a couple of guys got on top of the vehicle and started smashing the front windshield."

At the same time, Pittman said he took a deep breath, and reached back into the vehicle.

"I could feel that we were pulling on his left arm, so then I grabbed underneath his right arm and gave him a bit of a tug and he got his head out from underneath the dash.

"He started to come to, so I started yelling at him, 'Undo your seatbelt!' ... So then he did and we were able to pull him out and get him away from the vehicle.

"And within 30 seconds the whole vehicle was just completely engulfed in flames."

Pittman said the man regained consciousness and then had to be restrained by his rescuers.

"He didn't know where everybody was, and he was knocked so senseless, that he wasn't listening to the answers and he tried to run back into the car."

A short time later, emergency crews arrived to take the victims to Victoria General Hospital.

The nine-year-old girl suffered severe burns and was later flown to Vancouver. The toddler remains in Victoria, and the two adults have been released.

The children's condition has not been released.

"It's actually quite amazing," RCMP Const. Norm Smith said of the rescuers. "We have a lot of people that went above and beyond trying to help out.

"I, myself, don't know if I'd stick my hand into a burning vehicle, but a lot of people did and showed a lot of courage and probably saved the lives of the kids."

News of the crash has devastated the village of Nitinat Lake, which has just 200 residents, Chief Councillor Jack Thompson of the Ditidaht Tribe said Monday.

"The community's in, well, kind of shock mode right now. Everybody knows everybody here."

Thompson said the mother and her children have lived in the community their entire lives, while her husband works at Ditidaht Forest Products in Nitinat Lake, which is about a 45-minute drive west of Lake Cowichan.

The young girl was one of 70 kindergarten to Grade 12 students attending the tribe's new Ditidaht Community School, which opened last September. Village counselling staff will be talking to students at the school today.

"It's been a very, very upsetting incident on staff and students in the school," principal Dave Maher said. "It's a very close-knit community.

"She's just a young, beautiful student, just a beautiful kid you know. It's very, very tragic."

The cause of the crash remains under investigation. But RCMP suspect that the Jimmy, which was travelling north in the slow lane, experienced a mechanical failure, stalled on the highway, and was rear-ended by the pickup truck. The 34-year-old Cobble Hill man at the wheel of the pickup was not hurt in the crash.

"Right now, it looks like it truly is an accident," Smith said. "It was unforeseen, and right now it appears to be that it was unavoidable."

Police, however, are still interested in speaking to anyone who saw the collision or the prior driving behaviour of the motorist in a white 1998 Ford F150 pickup with a white canopy.

As for the rescuers, Saunders spent Sunday night in hospital being treated for smoke inhalation and burns to his hands. He hopes to help raise money for the family. Pittman suffered a minor scrape and burn.

Describing his fellow rescuers' courage, Pittmann said that "nobody that was there backed off, although, I know, everybody was just about ready to take up residence in Crap My Pants, Alberta, you know? Because it was pretty scary.

"Every time you heard a tire pop you were afraid it was going to be the fuel tank or something.

'There was a lot of people there ... You know, everybody did their part and saved these people."

kines@island.net

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2004

**here is another shot with both vehicles, as we arrived, I think.

[Jay911]

Great job! Well done.

[MalahatTwo7]

Family takes stock after fiery horror

Ian Dutton Times Colonist June 16, 2004

It was a typical family celebration, a salute to Grandpa Dave Sell's birthday Tuesday and an early Father's Day outing at a Sooke restaurant.

Then Dave and Shirley Sell headed for their Kemp Lake Road home and Neil Sell, Marilyn Peter and their two children, nine-year-old Amanda and two-year-old Gary-Lee, started the long trip home to Nitinat Lake.

That trip ended just south of the Shawnigan Lake turnoff Sunday evening when their SUV was hit by a pickup truck, eventually bursting into flames.

Passersby pulled the family from the flaming wreck.

"I just have to thank those people for everything they did," Shirley Sell said Tuesday. "If they hadn't done all they did, took all those risks, my family wouldn't be alive today."

Neil Sell and Marilyn Peter were released from hospital in Victoria. Gary-Lee is still in hospital here, while Amanda is being treated at B.C. Children's Hospital in Vancouver.

A hospital spokesman could not release Amanda's official condition, but Shirley Sell said the girl was badly burned and battered from the accident, and was heavily sedated.

"The baby, he's got two broken legs, one leg both bones, and the other one just one. He's got some burns around his ears and head, but he's in better shape than Amanda," said Sell.

"She's doing as well as can be expected. There's no internal damage and they're trying to find if there's lacerations to her corneas (eyes) but her face is so swollen it's hard to tell.

"She has extensive burns to her back and her face and arm and down one leg."

She said both children have breathing tubes.

Neil Sell said Amanda came through surgery well Tuesday, with some bruising from the seat-belts and no internal damage.

He said she was sedated to try to keep her from moving about.

"She's kind of toughing it out with the burns," he said.

Shirley Sell said Marilyn Peter normally rode in the back seat with Gary-Lee.

"If she'd been back there, she'd be dead," Sell said. "But they were all wearing seat-belts and God was with them."

The crash left the family in dire financial straits, she said.

"They had a lot of their stuff with them, and all the baby stuff and so on. Neil's trying to deal with ICBC so they can get another vehicle to get around in Vancouver because Amanda will need to be there for a while."

Dave Saunders, one of the heroes of the dramatic rescue, has begun a fundraising effort.

"Dave contacted us and we've agreed to collect money on behalf of the family," said Barry George of Help Fill a Dream Foundation. "It's just an extremely sad case."

George said anyone wishing to help can make a donation, earmarked Burn Family, to the foundation at 902 Hillside Ave., Victoria, B.C., V8T 1Z8; phone 250-382-3135 for information.

Jack Thompson, Ditidaht band councillor, said the 200-member Nitinat Lake community has scraped together a few dollars and is giving what help it can. "It's kind of scary when it happens this close to home," he said. "But it's also good to see the community pull together when someone is in need.

"Everyone here knows everyone else and they just want to help."

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2004

"But they were all wearing seat-belts and God was with them."
AMEN, to that one.

I will be heading down later today to make a small donation as well.