Search for fatal accident victim hampered by deep snow

CHESTER – A man who was violently ejected from his car during a two-vehicle crash Wednesday night was buried in at least a foot of snow just a few feet from his car for nearly half an hour before firefighters could find him.

An abundance of snow, darkness and the daunting physics of high-speed collisions conspired to frustrate about a dozen Lincoln firefighters as they searched for the missing driver near the intersection of Access Road and Route 116 until engineer Dave Slomienski spotted a partially buried hand.

Seven firefighters quickly but gingerly put the man on a stretcher and carried him to an awaiting Penobscot Valley Hospital ambulance. The crew rushed the man, identified as William Cain, 62, of Burlington, to Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln, where he was pronounced dead.

The victim had been hidden in snow between his car and two small white birch trees when Slomienski found him.

“I had walked through there once already, and I wasn’t the only one,” Slomienski said late Wednesday night. “My speculation would be that he impacted in the snow so hard that it covered him up and that when the car landed, it pushed more snow back on top of him.”

Thomas and Rose Ann White of Lincoln told investigators they were driving on Access Road heading west toward Interstate 95 at about 7:30 p.m. when a car on Route 116 ran a stop sign and crossed their path, according to Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Bill Birch.

The White’s Ford Freestar minivan reportedly smashed into the driver’s side door of Cain’s Saturn station wagon, sending both vehicles into snowdrifts at least 2 feet deep off the road in the southwest corner of the intersection. The minivan came to rest facing west on Access Road and the Saturn landed facing the opposite direction almost against the trees.

The accident was reported at about 7:35 p.m. and when the firefighters arrived at the scene about nine minutes later they found the Whites, shaken up but unhurt, but could find no driver or passenger in the other vehicle, Deputy Fire Chief Hervey Clay said.

“The first thing we had to do was find out what was going on,” Clay said. “The car’s driver or passengers were nowhere to be found.”

Firefighters thought the man might have left the scene, which often happens at such accidents, Clay said, but passers-by reported seeing no footprints in the snow around the car immediately after the accident.

Police and hospital workers also reported no one arriving at PVH with injuries.

“I knew he had to be there, because the hospital hadn’t heard from anybody,” Slomienski said.

Firefighters searched inside and around the car and around the van, Slomienski said. They used air bags to lift the car and dig under it with poles and snow shovels. Other firefighters simultaneously dug around the van with snow shovels and sounded the snow with poles.

They searched high up in nearby trees with flashlights, tried to find witnesses and checked woods several hundred feet away. When that failed, they expanded their search to include all sides of the intersection and used an infrared imaging camera to search around the car and in nearby woods.

Slomienski searched the area where the victim was eventually found with the camera, but detected no heat signatures, he said.

“I don’t think there’s any technology out there that can find heat in that much snow,” he said.

Clay and other firefighters were discussing doing a grid search, Clay said, which involves firefighters walking shoulder-to-shoulder in a designated pattern, when Slomienski, suspecting that the driver was close by, revisited the area around the trees and car and found Cain.

Even after the ambulance was on its way to the hospital, firefighters continued their search in the snow and woods near the Saturn to ensure that no one else had been ejected from the car in the same way. No one else was found.

“We did everything we could, everything we were supposed to do, but there was just too much snow,” Slomienski said.