JPL Commuter Van Goes Off the Crest

Many people take commuter vans to ease their commute. The vans are often driven by the employees themselves, sometimes on a rotating basis. On a cold morning in December 2004, 10 employees of JPL boarded their white commuter van in Lancaster for the long ride to JPL in La Cañada. Sometimes they took the crowded 14 Freeway, but more often they took the winding Angeles Forest Highway, a quicker route.

It was a tight group of regulars who had become close over their many months of daily commuting. Most of them were churchgoers and discussed church activities during their ride. Some slept. All were friends.

“We had a ball in the van,” one of them said later. “A lot of joking would go on, kidding around with each other.”

But the group was quieter than normal on this one particular trip and maybe that was part of the problem. Most of them were asleep when, halfway through the trip, the driver closed his eyes for just a second and drifted off. The road curved left, but the van went straight.

The van hit the berm hard at the side of the road waking everyone up in time to see the edge of the highway disappear behind them. In a flash everything was spinning. The van was rolling over and over 400 feet down the hillside, glass flying, people screaming and crying. When the van finally stopped rolling it was upright, but the roof had crushed down to the level of the seats. Some of the passengers were wedged down tight against their seats, unable to move. The driver was trapped beneath the crushed roof. His neck was broken but he was still conscious, although insensible. He honked the horn repeatedly. One woman was laid out on a bench seat, unable to move, her back broken. Blood began to pool on the floor of the van. Only one of the 10 was able to extricate himself and he painfully tried to climb back the slippery hillside for help.

Fortunately for those still alive in the van, help was not far away. A car happened to be right behind the van when it went off the side. The driver stopped but, seeing there was nothing he could do, he sped ahead and found a CHP unit just one-mile away. The call was put out and help streamed in from all quarters. First on the scene was a forest service employee who began scrambling down the slope. He could hear the van’s horn honking, and he met the one unharmed man trying to climb up, who called to him, “Help them, help them!” When he arrived at the van he could hear shouts for help coming from inside the crushed vehicle, but there was no way to get to them.

Soon the Highway Patrol, the Montrose Search and Rescue team, and other rescue services arrived. Power cutters were carried to the van and the survivors began to slowly get cut out of the wreckage. Three helicopters hovered overhead and as each victim was cut out they were strapped in a litter, and winched up to the waiting chopper. It took several hours to get the seven survivors out and to the hospital, and even more time to pull the three dead out. All of the victims who were found alive eventually recovered.

It had been a miracle that someone saw the accident and in an area with no cell reception that the authorities were alerted so quickly. Many more would have died had more time passed. In this case, with so many gruesome injuries, a call was put out for a sheriff department psychologist to come to the scene and talk with the team members after they had secured from the rescue.

The MSR pays a great price psychologically when they deal with accidents like this one.

If you enjoy these stories, my book “Thrilling Tales of the Montrose Search and Rescue” will come out in late November. All royalties from the book will go toward supporting these local heroes. I hope you’ll buy a copy.

  mike lawler