Wind-blown tree knocks girl off snowmobile

LAKEVILLE PLANTATION – Somewhere out there is a 15-year-old girl who is lucky her head is still attached to the rest of her body.

The girl was riding a snowmobile off Hobbs Road near Duck Lake at about 12:30 p.m. Friday when a wind-blown falling tree – a 40-foot section of fir with a 6-inch diameter – knocked her off her snowmobile, Game Warden Paul Farrington said.

The tree struck her a glancing blow, sparing her more serious injuries, Farrington said. As it was, she suffered bruises to her elbow and chest. She was treated at Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln and released later in the day.

“There’s not much that happens that you can truly call an accident. Usually there is some fault that occurs on the part of the operator, but there isn’t here,” Farrington said Friday. “This probably qualifies as a true accident. It was just an absolute freak of nature. I’ve never even heard of this before.”

The tree got hung up briefly in another tree on the way down, another reason the girl escaped serious injury. The teenager was also wearing a helmet, Farrington said. She didn’t see what hit her until it had.

“She said she was just riding along and was tossed off the sled by the tree,” said Farrington, who declined to identify the teenager, saying only that she was from southern Maine.

The tree hit hard enough to break off part of the sled’s windshield and some of its plastic molding. Exceptionally strong winds and icy conditions helped knock the tree down.

A LifeFlight helicopter was called to the scene as a precaution, but ambulance workers waved it off when it failed to find a safe landing spot, Farrington said.

The girl’s father found her first. The two were riding together when the accident occurred. He stopped when he noticed she wasn’t following him anymore, Farrington said. When he retraced their path, he found her lying on the ground with her sled about 20 feet away.

“She’s really lucky,” Farrington said. “She was unlucky to get hit, but lucky she wasn’t hurt really badly. She could have been killed.”

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