Rockwood snowmobiler hits plow blade

ROCKWOOD – A local man remained in serious condition from injuries he received Thursday when the snowmobile he was driving collided with the blade of a snowplow. Ralph “Jim” Dunton, 47, suffered four broken ribs, two of which were broken in two places, and internal injuries, according to Warden Mike Favreau of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Dunton was taken by ambulance from the scene to the Charles A. Dean Memorial Hospital in Greenville, airlifted by LifeFlight to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and then transferred to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. A hospital official there Friday afternoon reported his condition as serious.

Dunton had been snowmobiling on a private, unposted camp road behind the Moosehead Marina when the 2:15 p.m. accident occurred, Favreau said. Dunton had been traveling too fast to stop his vehicle when a snowplow operated by Roland Wortman Jr., 32, of Greenville pulled out of a Y in the road. Wortman was not plowing snow at the time.

Wortman stopped his truck, but Dunton was traveling too fast to avoid a collision, the warden said. Dunton’s 1993 Arctic Cat 580 caught the end of the snowplow blade sideways, and Dunton bounced off the blade. If the plow had not been on the pickup truck, Dunton might have been able to maneuver between the truck and the approximately 4-foot-high embankment of snow on the road, Favreau said.