Montana man sees slide-off, slides off spectacularly

January 19, 2012

Boundary County's first responders did everything right in rescuing an elderly Montana man from a crash that could have been much worse. Traffic on U.S. 95 was snarled this afternoon after an 80-year-old Montana man, whose name has not yet been released, lost control of his Cadillac, rolled over a guard rail and plunged down a steep embankment and through several trees before coming to rest at the bottom nearly 20 feet below ... and it turns out that he crashed on encountering the flares of a "simple" slide off that deputies were attending just a little further south. While his name hasn't yet been released, Sheriff's personnel say that it appears the driver in the Cadillac was traveling south on U.S. 95 just south of Mirror Lake Golf, travelling too fast for weather conditions, when he enountered the flares laid out to protect a slide off that had occurred only moments earlier. The deputy at the initial scene saw the Cadillac fly off the highway, and immediately called for help. When he got to the new scene, he radioed dispatch shortly before 1 p.m. and called for all the backup available, including extrication. The driver of the car told those first at his side that he didn't think he was hurt, but  the deputy noticed the man had suffered some fairly significant lacerations and called for an ambulance. He also noticed that it was going to be a chore to free the man from his vehicle ... let alone get the man back up to the roadway up an extremely slick and icy slope ... to a highway so slick it was difficult to stand on, let alone drive. Very soon the area was teeming with flashing lights; Idaho State Police, firefighters from South Boundary, Paradise Valley, the City of Bonners Ferry. Bonners Ferry City Police, Boundary Search and Dive Rescue, nearly every nearby unit from Boundary Volunteer Ambulance ... and regular traffic was backed up, both ways. Amazingly, the driver was pulled from his formerly beautiful car, not only worse for the wear for having gone through the trauma of shattering several heavy wooden posts on its way over the guardrail, down a steep embankment and through a few relatively small trees, but having had the driver's door and most of the roof cut off by local rescue personnel to free him from the car, was stabilized and pulled quickly to the highway by a team of rope experts and into the waiting ambulance, where he was checked out and zipped to Boundary Community Hospital. "He was beat up a little," one EMT said, "and he didn't remember much about the incident, but he was in remarkably good shape. Had he been driving anything less than an American-made Cadillac, he might not have survived."