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Thankful to be back home Yellowknifer pinned in van for three hours after crash on lonely stretch of road
Laura Bush
Jeff Dineley, a teacher at St. Patrick High School, was on his way to visit friends in Whitehorse with his partner Mariane Vadeboncoeur - also a teacher - on Monday, March 5. They left at about 8 a.m. in a green 1998 Chevy Venture van for what they planned as a two-day road trip. The accident left Dineley with his left forearm broken in two places, his left hip dislocated, and his left knee badly gashed. Dineley had been driving the whole way and by about 3 p.m., the pair had only made a few short stops, including a stop for gas in Fort Providence. The plan was to spend the night at Fort Liard hot springs, said Dineley. Highway 7, also called the Liard Trail, is a rough road, said Dineley. On that particular day, he remembers blowing and falling snow, with only one main path down the middle of the road clear for traffic. "We hardly passed any cars at all," he said. At kilometre 147 on Highway 7, Dineley saw a truck ahead traveling in the same direction they were. "I didn't realize he was stopped and not moving," said Dineley. "So, I slowed down, and I realized he was stopped and I slowed down some more." By the time Dineley realized he was on a collision course with the truck, it was too late. "As soon as I hit the brakes, I realized there was no stopping. The road was really slippery." Dineley turned the van to the right, toward the ditch. As a result, the driver's side corner of the van made impact with the back of the tractor-trailer, crumpling the hood and pushing the dashboard into him. He was badly injured, bleeding, and pinned inside the vehicle with no way out. The driver of the truck didn't even notice the impact, said Dineley. It completed its turn into a side road and drove away. "After the crash, everything seemed to work out," said Dineley. Vadeboncoeur was bruised, but otherwise unhurt by the impact and was able to get out of the van. Dineley said he remembers screaming for help, and realizing how completely in the middle of nowhere they really were. Then, a pick-up truck came out of the same access road the transport truck had been turning into. A Rowe's Construction crew, based in Fort Liard, was working on an environmental clean-up site near the highway, and a man named Linden came out of the pickup and started to help the couple. The construction crew called for help using a satellite phone they had on site, said Dineley. They provided heaters to keep them warm, juice boxes and even joked about putting on a movie for Dineley to watch as he waited for help to arrive from hours away - pinned in the van and bleeding from the gash in his knee. "I never got to that kind of panic state because all of those people who were there helping were just so helpful and so amazing," said Dineley. The construction crew managed to wrap a chain around the front of the van and was able to pull the dash off of Dineley just enough to stop him from losing circulation to his legs. "The dash had come down and was crushing my legs," said Dineley "I was losing circulation really fast." Vadeboncoeur got back in the van and sat with Dineley while they waited for more help to arrive. "It was just very surreal," she said about the whole experience. After about two hours of waiting, emergency crews from Fort Simpson and Fort Liard arrived on scene and got work freeing Dineley from his van. They needed the Jaws of Life to pry the roof off of the vehicle in order to get him out. It took about an hour. "I was in total stuck in the van for about three hours," said Dineley. He was then helicoptered to the Fort Simpson health centre where they popped his hip - which had by that time been dislocated for about five hours - back in its socket. "It was such an excruciating pain in my leg," said Dineley. "But I can't even describe to you the kind of relief it felt like once they had put it back in." Dineley was then medevaced to Stanton Territorial Hospital Monday night. Vadeboncoeur had a somewhat different trip home. She rode in an ambulance for about two hours to reach the Fort Simpson health centre, where she was checked out and released. Because she was not allowed in the medevac with Dineley, she spent the night in a bed and breakfast suggested by one of the nurses at the clinic, and then took a flight from Fort Simpson back to Yellowknife the next day. After two surgeries and about four days in hospital, Dineley is on the mend. He is walking around, sometimes with the help of a cane, but usually not. The bones in his left forearm were set using metal plates. But for all this, he is in good spirits and very grateful to everyone involved in getting himself and Vadeboncoeur out of the crash and back home. "I was thinking, there are so many ways it could have been so much worse," said Dineley. "What if I had hit a moose and there were no other cars around?"
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