My wife’s brother Bruce Westwood and his wife, Chris, once owned a business in which they repossessed cars and trucks and then transported them to their rightful owners whether that be in Utah or in other states.
He sometimes had members of his extended family help in
transporting said vehicles. I volunteered a couple of times to make some extra
money. Both jobs involved snowstorms, but the craziest one involved my oldest
son, Jason, on his 11th birthday in 1990. I probably included him for his birthday!
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| Jason wearing his DesNews T-shirt |
The other drivers were to head on their way back East, and I and
Jason were supposed to head back to Salt Lake. But then I found out that the
truck I was assigned to drive back was a standard!
Time to freak out! How could Bruce make such a crazy
mistake!?
I’m a left-leg amputee. I don’t have a leg to do the clutch!
Plus, I never ever learned how to drive a clutch – even when I had two legs. I
had always drove my parents’ cars, which had automatic transmissions. How could
I drive the pickup and do the clutch at the same time – with only one leg. And
not to mention in a snowstorm that was growing more intense every minute we
debated what to do.
When we called Bruce and told him the problem, he said he
forgot I only had one leg. He didn’t make the clutch connection! Oops!
But he insisted I could still do it – that we really didn’t
have any other choice. I don’t think he really realized that I didn’t know how
to do the clutch and get into the different gears.
Well, here we go!
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| W. Lee Hunt on his 40th birthday in 1990. |
Jason and I rode in the cab as one of the other drivers gave me some clutch clutch tips as we headed back to the intersection outside Kemmerer of highway 30 and 189. Then he and the other men left us and headed east on highway 30, and Jason and I headed south on 189.
So, how was I able to do the clutch and push on the gas at
the same time? That became Jason’s job!
He had to crawl down around me and get down on the floor of
the cab and push the clutch in and release it on my command. Getting into the
first gear worked out OK, but we had to drive really slow – not just because of
my inexperience, but because the snowstorm had gotten so bad that it was almost
a whiteout!
We – well, actually I – could see only a few hundred feet
ahead of us, plus keeping the truck on the road was a scary chore. Every once
in a while, Jason would poke his head up and look around. When we came to the I-80
onramp, we had to slow down to stay on the road but had to go fast enough so
the truck wouldn’t stall. Then, when we got on the onramp, we had to hurry up
and change gears twice.
Once we were on I-80, it became a tedious process of staying
within the tracks in the snow on the roadway, seeing through the crazy blizzard
and keeping up the speed of about 25 to 35 miles per hour. Finally, we were in
Echo Canyon and on our way back to Utah.
Did I mention that we were following the tracks made by the
semis which were ahead of us?
Well, all of a sudden, the tracks in the snow seemed to head
left and off the roadway! I caught myself and kept heading straight ahead.
Then I saw where the semitruck and trailer had ended up!
Way down below us in the eastbound lane of I-80, I could see
the wreckage of the semi and its trailer, which had slammed into a Greyhound
bus that was going east up the canyon. I was shocked, but I tried to keep calm
so Jason wouldn’t get frightened.
Here’s what the Deseret News said about the crash:
WORK UNDER WAY TO IDENTIFY VICTIMS
By Deseret News
Dec 19, 1990, 12:00am MST
Steve Fidel and Marianne Funk, Staff Writers
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| 1990 Greyhound bus. |
Work to identify seven victims of one of Utah's worst highway accidents continued Wednesday after Tuesday's collision between a Greyhound bus and a semitrailer truck.
Twenty-one crash victims were hospitalized, some of
them in critical condition, Wednesday morning, and a number of the
Chicago-bound bus's 45 passengers spent the night in private homes in Evanston
after being checked at Evanston Regional Hospital.Denver-based investigators
from the National Transportation Safety Board were also expected to arrive
Wednesday to begin investigating circumstances surrounding the crash, which law
enforcement officers blamed on high winds, blowing snow and icy roads at the
accident site 13 miles west of Evanston on I-80.
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| Snowstorm on I-80 in Wyoming |
The impact knocked the bus off the road, and it slid
about 100 yards on its side before coming to rest against a fence at the bottom
of another 15-foot embankment.
In the meantime, a second semi that was following the
bus collided with the Wan-ship Enterprises truck, leaving the two trucks
blocking the eastbound lanes of I-80 for more than six hours.
The bus driver, Bud McVey of Fillmore, saw the semi
coming but was unable to get out of the way. He did have time to shout
"Hold on, hold on" to the passengers, he told his wife in a phone
conversation from Evanston later Tuesday.
Only the driver's seat is equipped with seat belts.
McVey was shaken up and the drivers of both trucks were among those injured,
according to Sgt. Ron Gale, investigating officer for the UHP. Passengers on
the bus spoke of babies crying and people screaming as they stepped over some
of the victims and scrambled out of the bus through the broken-out windshield.
McVey, a trained emergency medical technician who spent two years assisting EMT
crews in Fillmore, called on passing motorists for help and then began
assessing the needs of his passengers. "He said it was an unreal
situation. He described it as being unimaginable, even after the work he had
done on the EMT team," said his wife.
"The dead were mingled with the injured," she
said. "It was impossible (for McVey) to use some of the skills and
training he had because people were piled on top of each other. EMTs are
trained never to move people until they are properly packed."
She said McVey did not break any bones, as had been
reported earlier, but suffered mostly emotional trauma.
A chain reaction of less serious accidents followed as
vehicles approaching the crash site were caught off guard by the traffic jam
and near-blizzard conditions. UHP troopers closed the interstate in both
directions, at Coalville to the west and Evanston to the east, until
midafternoon.
"They called in every available trooper from
Heber, Evanston and Coalville," said UHP spokesman Gary Whitney. The
troopers were also assisted by officers from Summit County, Kamas and state
troopers from Wyoming.
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| Echo Canyon in good weather |
The bus passengers with less serious injuries were sent
to an Army National Guard armory in Evanston after being treated in the
Evanston hospital's emergency room. Representatives from the Red Cross, The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Catholic Community Services
helped care for the stranded travelers at the armory and then helped them find
private homes to stay in during the night.
Army National Guard Sgt. Bob June said passengers began
arriving at the armory at about 12:30 p.m. …
Greyhound spokesman George Graveley said the
Chicago-bound bus No. 5001, which was on route No. 1314 and left Salt Lake City
at 8 a.m. bound for Chicago, was carrying 43 passengers. Troopers at the scene
put the passenger count at 45. Rasmussen said the Evanston hospital treated 41
of the accident victims in its emergency room. Eighteen were admitted for an
overnight stay, but none had serious injuries, he said.
Morgan resident Blaine Whimpey was driving toward
Evanston when he arrived at the accident scene several minutes after the crash.
"I could see the bus. There were people up on top of the bus pulling
people out," he said.
All of the people he saw emerging from the bus were
hurt. "They were just all moaning and groaning and freezing. They wanted a
warm place to get into," Whimpey said. "The traffic backup was a mile
and a half to two miles. We were just grabbing (passengers) and walking down
the road and throwing them in cars."
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| Parley's Canyon in snowstorm (KSL News Radio) |
Jason and had to keep going slowly down the canyon. Then we headed over to Parley’s Canyon and down the canyon and onto the 21st South Freeway. We never stalled out until we came to the offramp at Redwood Rd., which was just a couple-hundred yards away from Bruce’s office. Fortunately, Jason and I were able to get the truck going again and we virtually coasted into the parking lot at Bruce’s office.
What a crazy ride! What a terrible experience! What a miracle! Our Father in Heaven once again rescued me (and my son Jason) out of a crazy situation!
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