The two men who survived a June 29 ATV wreck owe their lives to a number of factors, but in the end it came down to a cell phone, officials say.
Lance Ryan, 37, and Larry Barstad, 37, were rescued after their six-wheeled ATV slid down a steep slope in the Buck Mountain area. They were carried to hospitals by helicopter. Both have since been released and are recovering.
Barstad’s father, Robert Barstad, said the 9-1-1 system works. The 9-1-1 system, the Sheriff’s Office, the paramedics, Life Flight and Reach, seatbelts, roll bars and the cell phone all contributed to the men’s rescue.
“If it wouldn’t have been for that, they probably never would’ve found them,” Barstad said. “Any one of them, if it had failed, they wouldn’t have made it.”
He credited some higher power, God, for protecting them.
“Someone was watching over him,” Barstad said of his son.
The accident apparently occurred while the two men were attempting to climb the wall of a gravel pit, Barstad said. “It’s awful easy to get rambunctious with ATVs.”
They called 9-1-1 at 10:43 p.m. Sunday. At 12:26 a.m., they reported hearing a siren. Within about 10 minutes, rescue workers located them where they had fallen about 150 feet down an embankment.
Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District responded with six vehicles, Fire Chief Mike Beaver said. Several deputies joined the search.
Beaver, who was off duty at the time, said “it was probably 30 to 45 minutes later that I went up there.” Emergency workers had searched around Wiley Creek, Cedar Creek, Buck Mountain and surrounding areas.
With no luck finding the two men, officials gathered at the end of the blacktop on Wiley Creek Road. They decided to split up again. Chad Calderwood of the Oregon Department of Forestry joined Beaver, and the two headed up Buck Mountain looking for ATV tracks going out spur roads.
Periodically, Beaver would sound his siren, he said. When he got past the four-mile marker, one of the victims told a dispatcher by cell phone that he could hear a siren.
Beaver instructed other rescuers to shut off their sirens and sounded his again, and again the caller heard it.
“Chad and I went back, and we could see where something had gone off the road,” Beaver said. They heard them yelling, and a deputy coming up from behind was able to go out and find them.
Ryan and Barstad had gone off a nearly vertical embankment, Beaver said. They had fallen to about the level of the road, which curved around below the point where the ATV left the road.
Calderwood and Beaver could see limbs broken by the fall of the six-wheel, covered ATV.
“They’re very, very fortunate,” Beaver said. “Honestly, it was just pure luck we even found them.”
The victims were fortunate they had a cell phone with a signal and that they weren’t unconscious, Beaver said. Above and around the two injured men, Beaver was unable to get a signal on his phone, he said.
“Over the past year, we’ve had a couple of instances with people who have had cell phones with them or On-Star in the vehicle,” Beaver said. The woman who had the On-Star system was hanging upside down, her vehicle supported by trees above an icy South Santiam River as snow fell on Highway 20. The initial dispatch location was about eight miles from her actual location, but On-Star and GPS coordinates enabled rescue workers to find her.
The fact that the victims were able to make the phone call was helpful, Linn County Sheriff’s Office Communications Manager Cathy Orcutt said.
Cell phones also can be located using GPS or for older phones, triangulation, she said.
She and Beaver both recommend taking fully charged phones into the woods.
Larry Barstad sustained head injuries, including loose teeth, a broken bone above the eye and a broken nose.
The Barstads say they have talked to Ryan, who was more severely injured, since the accident, and he’s home. He can’t talk yet, though. His jaw is wired shut.