A woman seriously injured in a Wednesday morning crash on Highway 101 has the Sechelt fire department to thank after a quick extrication from a mangled vehicle may have saved her life. The two-vehicle accident occurred at about 7:45 a.m. The victim is now recovering in a Vancouver hospital.
Sunshine Coast RCMP Cpl. Wayne Plimmer said a Toyota Camry travelling southbound came around a corner in the 5400 block of Highway 101 (near Monkey Tree Lane) when the right wheels made contact with gravel on the road shoulder. The car began to fishtail on the damp road surface and swerved into the opposite lane, where it was T-boned by an oncoming Volvo sedan.
Sechelt fire chief Bill Higgs said the Toyota's centre post on the passenger side had been bashed halfway across the car, trapping a 30-year-old woman in the vehicle. "We needed to get her out of there fairly quickly, as her injuries appeared significant," Higgs said. The team went to work, while a B.C. Ambulance Service crew stabilized the victim by giving her oxygen and a neck brace. Twenty-one minutes later, the team had cut off the roof of the car and extricated the woman.
All four people involved in the collision were transferred to St. Mary's Hospital, and the seriously injured passenger was transferred by medi-vac helicopter to Vancouver General Hospital. At press time Thursday afternoon, police listed her in stable condition. The 35-year-old male driver of the Toyota was treated for minor injuries and released from care, while the two occupants of the Volvo required day treatment at St. Mary's.
Higgs said it's a section of road that's seen more than its share of accidents over the years, due to the adjacent tall trees that keep the sun from drying rain or frost from the road surface. He credited the ambulance crew and the RCMP for working seamlessly on Wednesday morning to run "a pretty fluid operation," he said.
The local fire department is among the best in western North America at auto extrications, having won competitions at the Pile Up in Puyallup Auto Extrication Competition in Washington state over the last few years. The event pits the Sechelt crew against paid and volunteer firefighting crews from several Western provinces and states. Traffic was diverted onto Monkey Tree Lane for more than an hour after the accident while three members of Sunshine Coast RCMP traffic services investigated the scene. The investigation remains ongoing.
