Man suffers crushing injuries while moving house

PALMER — A man was injured Monday afternoon while helping move a house to make way for the Bogard Road extension.

Palmer police, Alaska State Troopers and local emergency crews responded to the accident on Trunk Road between Tern and Forestwood drives around 3 p.m.

The house was heading up Trunk Road after being moved out of the neighborhood at the end of the current Colony Schools Way to make way for the new Bogard Road.

AST spokesperson Megan Peters said the injured man was helping move the house when he was run over by a dolly being used in the move.

She said he was flown by emergency helicopter to the hospital for treatment around 3:30 p.m.

Palmer Assistant Fire Chief Todd Russell said that by the time medics and rescuers arrived on scene, the man’s co-workers had moved the house dolly off of him.

“We did not have to lift the house or anything like that,” Russell said.

He said Palmer’s acting fire chief, Dave Byers, was in charge of the scene and that they helped medics package the patient for transportation to a hospital, which was made using an air ambulance flying, Russell said he thought, to an Anchorage hospital.

He said that the injuries were to the man’s “lower extremities” — medic-speak for legs — and that they were crushing injuries, but that he couldn’t say how severe they were.

“I would personally call them critical,” Russell said, adding that, “it would be up to a doctor to actually determine how critical.”

Peters said the accident happened on a piece of Trunk Road that is closed as part of a years-long, ongoing upgrade to the road.

Photos of the house show a large one-story structure that took up both lanes of the road.

“This was a full-sized house, I would guess somewhere between the areas of 60 by 90 (feet),” Russell said.

The method of moving it involved multiple dollies that he said he thinks might have been steered independently, but he wasn’t sure.

“I’m not an expert on that,” Russell said.

Peters said troopers were mapping the scene Monday afternoon using a piece of computer equipment similar to that which surveyors use. The information collected will be used in a further investigation into the accident.

Greg Johnson contributed to this story.