Challenging Rescue for Rochester Firefighters
Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News) - The Rochester Fire Department performed a challenging rescue following a car crash on Highway 63 just north of Rochester late Tuesday morning.
Deputy Fire Chief Steve Belau says a report of a person trapped in a car came in around 11:50 a.m. He says a passerby stopped to check after she spotted what appeared to be a car upside down in a deep ditch next to the highway in an area just south of the 75th Street roundabout.
The passerby heard screaming coming from the vehicle and found an adult woman inside the car. Belau says she had swerved to avoid an animal on the roadway, which sent her car careening over the top of a concrete culvert before the vehicle landed nose first in a dry creek bed and then flipped onto its roof.
The violent crash crumpled the car’s the roof, leaving the firefighters very little space to provide emergency medical care and safely extricate the woman from the wrecked vehicle. The firefighters, with help from Olmsted County Sheriff’s Deputies, managed to pull the woman out through the rear window of the upside down car and then used a basket stretcher system to bring her up and out of the deep ditch.
Belau says the woman was transported to St. Mary’s Hospital by ambulance. Her name and information about her condition have not been released.