Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
A 73-year-old woman was injured when her vehicle slid off snow-covered Highway 20 just east of Milepost 51, near the old Mountain House, and rolled down an embankment above the South Santiam River.
Barbara Jane Brown of Depoe Bay was westbound on Highway 20 when her vehicle, a 2002 Buick sport utility vehicle slid off the road. It rolled several times before coming an rest on the passenger side of the vehicle.
She was transported to Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital and later to Oregon Health Sciences University. According to Oregon State Police, she suffered from a fractured “C2,” a vertebra in the neck.
Rescue workers and medics faced tough conditions for a rescue.
“The vehicle was actually on the passenger side,” Fire Chief Mike Beaver said. “The top of the vehicle was resting on two eight- to 10-inch alder trees.”
The trees were some 30 feet below the road, Beaver said, and if they hadn’t been there, another quarter turn of the vehicle would have placed it upside down in the river.
Brown was suspended initially by her seatbelt, Beaver said. She removed it and fell against the passenger door and window. The roof of the vehicle had been crushed. The only option rescue workers had was to extricate her through the driver’s door.
“It was technical, and it was dangerous for our people,” Beaver said. Some of the rescue workers were standing on the driver’s side of the vehicle.
“There was a lot of stuff going on there,” Beaver said. They were extricating a trauma patient on a steep bank blanketed in snow. They had to set up a rope system to get her out, and they had to deal with traffic going by on a slippery road, and vehicles tended to slide toward the scene on that section of the highway.
Brown had constant communication with Linn County dispatchers using On-Star.
Medics and rescue workers received constant updates, Beaver said. The area had no cell phone coverage, and “it was just amazing dispatch kept giving us updates.”
As far as he knows, it’s the first time emergency workers have had the ability to communicate with the victim that way in the Sweet Home area, Beaver said. “Right there is a heck of an advertisement for that system.”
Playing back the dispatch recording, Linn County Communications Supervisor Dick Slinger, said it sounded like commercials for On-Star.
“We were actually talking to the woman who was trapped in the car,” he said.
Brown did not report the accident herself, Slinger said. Another person reported it four minutes prior to Brown establishing contact through On-Star.
The initial report placed the wreck at milepost 45, Slinger said. On-Star coordinates showed the actual location at about milepost 51.5, east of the Mountain House.
It was six to seven miles further east, Beaver said. “On the way up there, mileposts were covered with snow. The last one I saw was 48.”
“She’s a very lucky lady,” he said. “If it would have happened after dark and no one would have seen it, who knows what would have happened.”