LVVFD Calls: Treacherous ice injures a responder to another canceled call

I was on the Lee Vining Volunteer Fire Department for 15 years. This was one of my first few calls after joining. Some names may be changed.

Thursday April 18, 1996, 7:10 am

All week a series of storms had been dropping snow and rain in Lee Vining. They were pretty wimpy storms: no accumulation in Lee Vining, however each morning Tom's car (from June Lake) had some snow on it. This was not the Fire Chief Tom, but former-Grand Canyon Ranger-turned-Mono Lake Committee Bookstore Manager. I remember an Easter gathering that spring at the County Road crossing of Lee Vining Creek, where he found all the hidden Easter eggs in the sagebrush by using his tracking skills.

Mammoth had gotten about ten inches of snow that week, with 18" on the mountain. The storms brought more wind than anything else.

The previous night it had been very lightly snowing--and melting when it hit the ground. Everything was wet, and there was no snow on the ground. When I went to bed at 11:00 pm, it wasn't snowing, and the ground was bare.

At 3:00 am, I looked out the window and saw 2-3" of snow on the ground. The landscape had been magically transformed while I slept over the last four hours. It had stopped snowing and I could see a few stars.

I got up at 7:00 am and took a shower. As I shut off the water and began to dry off, I heard the fire siren. I finished drying off, got dressed, and decided to take my bike, since it hadn't snowed that much.

I rode up the driveway and it was amazingly slick. There was no snow on the roads--it had blown away--but the coating of ice on the pavement was thick, loud (my bike tires generated loud cracking noises), and slippery. I made it to Hwy 395 and crossed too fast. I tried to turn and my wheels slipped out from under me. I slammed into the icy pavement with my lower back and right elbow, and scratched and bruised my right hand. I quickly got up and carried my bike to the side of the road, out of the way of an oncoming semi truck. I was aching.

Others were there, but everyone was arriving a bit slow due to the snowy and icy conditions. Those who drove did so with their doors open so they could see around the snow on their windshields. Geoff and Stewart just ran.

They were trying to jump start the Suburban. I stood around and waited. They finally got it started, and we piled in, waited for Tom and Billy to get in, and then we drove out onto the ice.

The call was for a pickup truck rollover at the Mono City water tank. We found the marks in the embankment when we got there, but it looked like the truck had been righted and driven away. We returned to base. My arm had stopped hurting, but my back was aching. We got back at 7:45 am, and I was amazed at how slippery it still was. I walked my bike home.