bloodrayne
12-10-2004, 07:41 AM
La Canada Flintridge – Rescuers who scrambled down a mountainside to save victims of a deadly van crash came upon a grisly scene: one person was thrust from the vehicle and died, and several others had spent nearly an hour hanging from windows or trapped under a collapsed roof.
Three people in all were killed when the commuter van heading to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory plunged off a wet, winding mountain road Wednesday and tumbled 200 feet.
Ten people were inside the van when it went off Angeles Crest Highway and tumbled down the rugged, densely forested mountainside in the Angeles National Forest. The section of highway where the van crashed had no guardrails, authorities said.
Notified by a driver who saw the crash, two California Highway Patrol officers at a nearby movie shoot climbed down to the vehicle and called for rescue workers who ripped the van apart to get to the injured passengers.
"It's one of the most gruesome scenes I've ever seen," said Mike Leum, chief of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department search and rescue team. "There was every type of trauma you would expect to see in this situation: compound fractures, evisceration, multiple head trauma. There was a complete collapse of the roof onto the passenger area."
The dead were Jane Frances Galloway, 49, of Lancaster; Kerri Lynn Agey, 48, of Ontario, and Dorothy Marie Forks, 53, whose hometown was not released, the county coroner's office said.
Forks worked in the Pasadena lab's human resources department, Galloway was a business operations manager and Agey was an administrator for security services contractor Wackenhut, said Blaine Baggett, executive manager of JPL's office of communications and education. Galloway had been with JPL for 10 years, Forks for 14.
"The loss of Dorothy, Jane and Kerri is deeply felt by all of us," Baggett said. "It takes all kinds of people to explore the solar system. ... Some of them are engineers, some scientists, but the accomplishments that are made possible here are made possible by the contributions of all the professionals."
Baggett said employees will be offered grief counseling, adding that none of JPL's major programs, which include operation of the Mars rovers, would be affected by the crash.
A driver reported seeing the van go off the roadway shortly after 6:30 a.m. without veering or braking, CHP officials said. Cell phones don't work in the area about 1,500 feet up the mountain but the driver alerted the CHP officers who were working with a film crew less than a mile away, CHP Chief Art Acevedo said.
The officers descended the steep, unstable mountainside without helmets, ropes or any rescue gear, then climbed back up to radio for help and went down again, remaining with the victims for three hours.
The seven crash survivors hold positions ranging from engineer to administrator and include four employees of JPL, two NASA employees and a contractor worker. Two were released from hospitals by late in the day and one was expected to be released shortly, Baggett said.
Four men and a woman in their 40s and 50s were taken to Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. Two were in critical but stable condition, one with a broken back and the other with a fractured neck as well as facial cuts and less serious injuries, hospital spokeswoman Connie Matthews said.
Another victim was in good condition and the other was listed as fair, Baggett said.
About 450 of the 5,500 people who work at the lab participate in its vanpool program, which is not operated by JPL and involves about 30 vans leased from outside companies, Baggett said.
The accident occurred about 20 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles on a two-lane blacktop with steep drops. The road is traveled by hundreds of cars daily, some of them in such a hurry that authorities have nicknamed it "the Palmdale 500." People living in the Antelope Valley area of the high desert northeast of Los Angeles use it as a commuter road and a shortcut to reach a freeway in Pasadena.
Three people in all were killed when the commuter van heading to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory plunged off a wet, winding mountain road Wednesday and tumbled 200 feet.
Ten people were inside the van when it went off Angeles Crest Highway and tumbled down the rugged, densely forested mountainside in the Angeles National Forest. The section of highway where the van crashed had no guardrails, authorities said.
Notified by a driver who saw the crash, two California Highway Patrol officers at a nearby movie shoot climbed down to the vehicle and called for rescue workers who ripped the van apart to get to the injured passengers.
"It's one of the most gruesome scenes I've ever seen," said Mike Leum, chief of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department search and rescue team. "There was every type of trauma you would expect to see in this situation: compound fractures, evisceration, multiple head trauma. There was a complete collapse of the roof onto the passenger area."
The dead were Jane Frances Galloway, 49, of Lancaster; Kerri Lynn Agey, 48, of Ontario, and Dorothy Marie Forks, 53, whose hometown was not released, the county coroner's office said.
Forks worked in the Pasadena lab's human resources department, Galloway was a business operations manager and Agey was an administrator for security services contractor Wackenhut, said Blaine Baggett, executive manager of JPL's office of communications and education. Galloway had been with JPL for 10 years, Forks for 14.
"The loss of Dorothy, Jane and Kerri is deeply felt by all of us," Baggett said. "It takes all kinds of people to explore the solar system. ... Some of them are engineers, some scientists, but the accomplishments that are made possible here are made possible by the contributions of all the professionals."
Baggett said employees will be offered grief counseling, adding that none of JPL's major programs, which include operation of the Mars rovers, would be affected by the crash.
A driver reported seeing the van go off the roadway shortly after 6:30 a.m. without veering or braking, CHP officials said. Cell phones don't work in the area about 1,500 feet up the mountain but the driver alerted the CHP officers who were working with a film crew less than a mile away, CHP Chief Art Acevedo said.
The officers descended the steep, unstable mountainside without helmets, ropes or any rescue gear, then climbed back up to radio for help and went down again, remaining with the victims for three hours.
The seven crash survivors hold positions ranging from engineer to administrator and include four employees of JPL, two NASA employees and a contractor worker. Two were released from hospitals by late in the day and one was expected to be released shortly, Baggett said.
Four men and a woman in their 40s and 50s were taken to Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. Two were in critical but stable condition, one with a broken back and the other with a fractured neck as well as facial cuts and less serious injuries, hospital spokeswoman Connie Matthews said.
Another victim was in good condition and the other was listed as fair, Baggett said.
About 450 of the 5,500 people who work at the lab participate in its vanpool program, which is not operated by JPL and involves about 30 vans leased from outside companies, Baggett said.
The accident occurred about 20 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles on a two-lane blacktop with steep drops. The road is traveled by hundreds of cars daily, some of them in such a hurry that authorities have nicknamed it "the Palmdale 500." People living in the Antelope Valley area of the high desert northeast of Los Angeles use it as a commuter road and a shortcut to reach a freeway in Pasadena.