Mountain rescue succeeds through hail, wind, lightning

SALISBURY — Despite abysmal conditions, first responders managed to rescue an injured hiker from Bear Mountain during a tornado-warned thunderstorm on Saturday, Sept. 6.

“It was hailing, we couldn’t see anything,” said Jacqui Rice, chief of service of the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Service. “The trail was a river,” she added.

Just after 3:30 p.m., Rice was positioned back at the station, her uniform spattered with mud from the harrowing mission high on the ridgeline of the Taconic Mountains. “It was really something,” she said with a chuckle as fellow first responders filtered into the station, sharing their own reports of unnavigable roads due to downed trees and powerlines.

Rice said that emergency crews were dispatched at 11:30 a.m. on report of a hiker with an injured left knee on the Appalachian Trail at North Bear Mountain, just south of the Massachusetts border. The victim was unable to walk and needed to be transported off the mountain.

The team gained elevation from Salisbury via Mount Riga and Mount Washington Roads, leaving an ambulance at a location three miles from the hiker. The group travelled as far as possible with ATVs but eventually had to continue on foot due to the “very steep” and rocky terrain.

Rice said conditions were fair during the approach, but when they reached the injured party — “then the weather deteriorated bigtime.” Wind, rain, thunder, lightning and hail made the remainder of the extraction difficult, Rice reported, as they transported the victim via a Stokes litter basket on the slope. Responders deployed ropes to safely transport the victim through the difficult terrain despite the adverse conditions.

Overall, the team consisted of more than 20 members of various regional first response teams. Rice reported that rescuers from Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance, the Lakeville Hose Company, the Northwest Regional Ropes Rescue Team and responders from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection made up the mutual aid effort. “Even the ropes team from Amenia, New York came."

Once off the steep terrain, the victim was brought via ATV to the ambulance. Rice said that due to storm damage blocking the roadways, the team left the ATVs at the site and exited the area with the ambulance. The victim was reportedly taken to Sharon hospital in stable condition.

Despite the adverse weather, Rice confirmed that the victim was transported off the mountain safely. Lakeville Hose Company Chief Jason Wilson said that the rescue itself was straightforward despite the conditions, and had wrapped up by 2:30 p.m.

The storm, which was blowing off to the Northeast by then, had wrought havoc across the far Northwest Corner, and as a result had clogged the emergency airwaves in addition to the streets – the Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance Service had to self-dispatch the rescue as the Litchfield County Dispatch was jammed up by extensive emergency calls across the region.

The thunderstorm was one of the strongest of the season. It showed signs of rotation on weather radars, which indicates the possibility of tornado formation. Rotating supercells, of which there were several in the region as a line of strong storms passed through in the mid-afternoon yesterday, are rare in New England. The atmospheric conditions they require to form align only a handful of times per year.

The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning at 1:23 p.m. in Dutchess County for a cell moving northwest. At 1:42 p.m., the NWS reported a storm “capable of producing a tornado” above Ancram, New York, that would impact northwestern Salisbury and part of North Canaan just after 2 p.m.

The line of storms was observed to have produced 60+ mile per hour straight-line winds in several locations across Connecticut and Massachusetts. There have been anecdotal reports from storm chasers and residents of funnels trying to drop from the storm, but without touching down. These sightings have not been corroborated by weather officials.

The NWS confirmed one tornado that touched down near Worcester, Massachusetts later in the day, but has not reported any in the Northwest Corner or surrounding region.

Still, the storm wrought significant impacts across the area, closing Route 44 between downtown North Canaan and the intersection with Belden Street for a short period due to downed wires, as well as a section of Route 41 in Taconic that only reopened Sunday afternoon after a fallen tree was removed.

First responding crews reported Taconic was especially hard hit, with travel in some areas essentially impassable immediately following the storm. Major roadways have since been cleared of blockages.

Photo by Noreen Doyle

Trees were brought down by severe wind in Taconic.