By Milo Dailey
Thursday March 9
Watertown Public Opinion Staff Writer
WEBSTER - A Canadian truck driver and a rescue worker were still
hospitalized for hypothermia Thursday morning here after the driver barely escaped drowning Wednesday night dangling upside down during a three-hour
ordeal in Rush Lake west of Waubay.
Rescue workers stood chest-deep for over three hours in high winds and icy waters to cut him from an overturned and half-submerged semi tractor. The accident call came at 7:45 p.m.
Michaud Vital, 40, Otterburn Park, Quebec, and local ambulance service operator Mark Christensen were at Lake Region Hospital for hypothermia treatment, Day County Sheriff Doug Nelson told the Public Opinion Thursday morning.
Several other rescue workers were treated for hypothermia and exposure and released from the hospital Wednesday night.
Air temperatures at Highway 12 at the lake were about 13 degrees, winds were gusting at 50 miles per hour and water temperatures were just above freezing as only one rescuer at a time could get near the dangling and pinned driver to cut him free.
Vital was driving westbound on the Highway 12 causeway across the lake when high winds pushed the truck off the road. The semi rolled half way into the water.
Nelson said the upside down and crushed cab was half submerged; "The driver was able to hit the recliner button so he could lay the back of the seat back and get his head out of the water." "Now," Nelson said, "He's laying face down pinned between the roof and floor of the semi in the seat. As we worked, the thing kept settling in and crushing more."
Vital's head was held above the water during his ordeal by a door from the refrigeration unit and a life jacket, Nelson said. "We could only get one rescue worker in there," Nelson said, "then we had a boat that we pushed up to the passenger door of the semi - there were 14 to 16 feet of water on one side of the semi and the other was on the shore."
Nelson said Christensen had originally begun work to help the driver before an immersion suit was brought to the scene, then went into the boat to help the driver. The sheriff himself was in the water chest deep at the beginning of the rescue work, "and I lasted about 15 minutes." Then, he said, "One guy at a time worked with the Jaws of Life while the others in the boat did what they could for the driver."
Nelson said the rescue was a joint effort of emergency people in the area, but especially S.D. Highway Patrol officer Wes Williams, Day County Deputy Sheriff Brent Koens and S.D. Game, Fish and Parks Conservation Officer Bob Losco: "They were the three guys that did most of the water work." Also involved were Webster Fire Department, Waubay Police, especially Barry Hillestad, and the Webster Police Department.
The S.D. National Guard was called to the scene as rescue workers feared they would have to lift the semi straight up in order to save the driver's life.
Brethren...
... Please allow me the point of personal privilege for a few lines in
praise for a Masonic Brother.
... Wednesday night, March 8, in 50 mile-per-hour winds (90 KPH???) a semi
truck went off the road in my newspaper's coverage area (and in my own
reporting area of responsibility.) The truck turned upside down half in the
water which was about 15 feet deep on one side, 34 degrees Fahrenheit,
perhaps 1 degree Celsius. The driver barely managed to pull his face from
the frigid water and dangled face down only inches from the water pinned in
his truck.
.... Among first rescuers on the scene was Bro. Mark Christensen, PM of the
Webster, S.D. craft Lodge and past potentate of the Yelduz Shrine in
Aberdeen, SD. Bro. Mark is operator of the local ambulance service and --
it's a very small community quite remote in ways -- was the first medical
professional on the scene.
.... In the dark frigid night with -25 degree F. wind chills and freezing
wind-blown drizzle, he waded to the crushed truck cab to help. When others
brought an exposure suit to wear while helping the dangling victim, Bro.
Mark then stepped into a boat to continue offering his best to the man
pinned in the crushed truck from the other side window.
.... Three hours later the victim, a Canadian from Quebec, was pulled from
the crushed cab. Only he and Mark were hospitalized for exposure and
dangerously low body core temperatures.
.... Others also were heroes at that frigid scene, several I also know as
friends.
.... But there was Bro. Mark.
.... He wasn't in the water and wind-blown frozen drizzle from any motive
but to save a man he didn't know, from a world away from our prairie homes,
but a frightened fellow human only inches and a few degrees of body
temperature from death.
.... Mark would be the last to claim perfection. But here is a man, and a
Mason.
Milo Dailey, PM
Concord 13
Watertown, SD