Snowmachine vs. vehicle crash pins boy under truck

PALMER — Responders are crediting a quick response for a sunny prognosis for an 8-year-old boy pinned under pickup truck after a wreck on Soapstone Road Saturday.

“From what we could gather the child was on a snowmachine, came out of a driveway in front of a person who was on the road driving a pickup truck,” said Palmer Deputy Fire Chief Bruce Axtell. “The pickup truck and the child and the snowmachine wound up in the ditch on the other side of the road.”

The wreck was called in at around 2:30 p.m. and happened near the intersection of Soapstone and Smith Street.

Axtell said it looked pretty bad at first.

“The tire of the pickup truck was actually on the child’s chest and stopped his breathing,” Axtell said.

It also stopped his heart.

Someone out there, either a neighbor or the boy’s father, had a winch that was able to pull the pickup off of the boy’s chest. Medics went to work, doing CPR for at least 20 minutes and inserting a tube down his throat.

“His color came back, he had good profusion when they put him in the ambulance,” Axtell said. “Kids are pretty resilient. If you can get them breathing and get their heart working again they’re pretty resilient.”

He said that Palmer sent fire, rescue and ambulance workers there, the Central Mat-Su Fire Department also sent an ambulance. Axtell’s main job on scene was trying to find a place to land a helicopter. The spot he chose was in a cul-de-sac at the end of Soapstone.

“It’s the only place on the road where there’s no power lines,” he said.

Once in the ambulance the boy was driven to the helicopter and flown to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.

“The child is in the operating room there and so far the prognosis is looking good,” Axtell said shortly before 5 p.m. Saturday.

He said he thinks that from the time the page went out summoning responders to the scene until the boy was in the hospital in Anchorage was about an hour. That figure impressed Palmer Emergency Services Director Jon Owen.

“That’s amazing. God was smiling on that boy,” he said.

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