POCATELLO, ID — A Pocatello man and woman are alive after a nighttime UTV crash on Scout Mountain that emergency responders say turned into a rescue built on a chain of unlikely breaks. The crash happened Sunday night, Aug. 30, after the driver missed a curve on Top Scout Mountain Road and the vehicle plunged down a steep ravine.
The pair, both pinned inside the wreckage, were found only after Bannock County dispatchers managed to trace an unusual 911 call from a known cell dead zone and kept the line open. Rescuers later used a siren, a winch and a jack to reach them. Their Rottweiler was also in the vehicle and was not hurt.
911 call from a dead zone gave dispatchers a start
The ordeal began around 8:20 p.m. when Bannock County Sheriff’s Office dispatchers received a 911 call that connected from Scout Mountain south of Pocatello. Dispatchers could hear the two victims talking, but the pair could not hear the dispatchers at all.
Using GPS information, dispatchers traced the call to an area where cell service is known to be unreliable and calls usually do not get through. Even with that location information, the wreck itself was hidden below the road and could not be seen from above. Keeping the line open gave responders confirmation that a crash had happened and that the people inside were trapped.
Deputies searched Top Scout Mountain Road until a siren changed everything
Sheriff’s deputies, search and rescue crews and a Pocatello Fire Department ambulance headed up the mountain with only GPS coordinates to guide them. Sgt. Mike Jons, a 25-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, was first on scene and drove Top Scout Mountain Road repeatedly while trying to spot the wreck.
He could not see the UTV from the roadway. Dispatchers then told him to turn on his siren while they stayed on the open phone line. That worked: the sound came through the call, dispatchers radioed that he was close, and Jons stepped out of his vehicle and saw the overturned UTV below with the two victims inside and their dog beside them.
Rescuers had to lift the UTV off a tree to free the pair
Jons tried to pull the victims out on his own, but he could not get them free. Search and rescue personnel arrived soon after, along with an off-duty deputy, and the group used a winch and a jack to lift the UTV off the tree it had landed against.
That allowed rescuers to pull the man and woman from the wreckage after they had been pinned with their legs trapped. Authorities said the vehicle had rolled down the ravine after leaving the gravel road on the curve. The crash site was so far below the road that it could not be seen by people passing above.
Remote terrain delayed the hospital run for hours
Getting the injured pair to medical care proved difficult because of the mountain setting. The man was more seriously hurt and needed an air ambulance, but crews had trouble finding a safe place for the helicopter to land on the rugged terrain.
After two failed attempts, emergency workers finally found an open stretch of ground around 11:50 p.m., nearly three and a half hours after the crash was first reported. The helicopter took the man to Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello. The woman was loaded into a Pocatello Fire Department ambulance shortly before that and driven down the mountain to the same hospital.
Sheriff’s Office says a series of unlikely breaks kept it from turning fatal
Authorities said the crash could easily have ended in tragedy if any one of several things had gone differently. First, the 911 call had to connect at all from inside a dead zone. Then dispatchers had to keep the line open and think to use the siren to help guide Jons to the site.
Sgt. Jons said the victims were fortunate in another way as well: they stayed inside the UTV as it rolled. Neither person was wearing a seat belt, and he said they could have been thrown from the vehicle and killed instantly. Instead, both survived the wreck, and the dog was found unharmed too.
Local news that matters, from Dulaney Griffin.
