Anchorage man killed in snowmachine crash

By ANDREW WELLNER

Frontiersman.com

BIG LAKE — An Anchorage man died after being injured in a single vehicle crash on the Big Lake Ice Road late Sunday.

Alaska State Troopers say they responded to the accident at 11:41 p.m., Dec. 29 and when they arrived, emergency services crews had already begun CPR.

Troopers’ say their investigation found that William Hunsuck, 54, of Anchorage hit a snowberm on the side of the road while driving a side-by-side snowmachine at a high rate of speed. He lost control, was not wearing his seat belt, and was ejected when the vehicle rolled multiple times, troopers say. Trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said the machine traveled almost 280 feet before it came to a rest.

Hunsuck, who was wearing a helmet during the crash, was declared deceased at the scene, troopers say. The side-by-side machine comes equipped with seat belts.

“The passenger of it had a seatbelt on but the driver did not. The driver was the only one ejected,” West Lakes Fire Department Battalion chief Jim Keel said Monday. “Speed and alcohol played a role in it.”

Trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters confirmed that law enforcement suspects alcohol played a role.

“We believe so — a toxicology screen will have to be done to determine (for sure),” Peters wrote in an e-mail.

Keel described the snowmachine as having a full roll cage but not being fully enclosed. Peters said it was a dual-track Skidoo Elite.

The ice road, which is built and maintained each year by private individuals in the community, is sitting on more than two feet of ice right now, which means that Keel and his colleagues were able to bring out an ambulance and a full rescue rig. The crash happened 3.5 miles from the department’s downtown fire station and a half-mile from Burnt Point.

Keel said that efforts were hampered by the directions they received.

“Different directions were given to us by the first caller which had us going the wrong way,” Keel said. “They were not familiar with the lake because they were from Anchorage.”

Still, he said, crews were on scene 30 minutes working on Hunsuck before he was finally declared dead. He said that declaring a patient deceased is not the way crews like these incidents to end.

It’s an accident. It’s going to happen. When people are drinking and driving in a car a motorcycle or a snowmachine,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.