Questions raised over fatal crash response

SANDPOINT - Public safety officials in Bonner County concede emergency response to a deadly head-on crash on U.S. Highway 95 earlier this month could have gone more smoothly, but they don't believe the tragic outcome could have been avoided.

"There may have been a slight delay, but I don't think the outcome would have been different," said Sagle Fire Chief Rob Goodyear. "The patients ultimately were all transported with appropriate care given the nature of the injuries."

Goodyear's observation comes after a post-incident critique with agencies which responded to the collision and amid lingering questions from witnesses at the scene who said there appeared to be confusion over who was going to transport patients and in what order.

Kimberlee R. Dingman, a 44-year-old from Sandpoint, died as a result of the Dec. 3 crash in Careywood.

Idaho State Police say William David Deardorff was driving a pickup truck south on the highway when he failed to negotiate a bend in the road and crashed into a northbound Jeep Cherokee driven by Crystal L. Bertolluci, a 31-year-old who was critically injured in the collision. Dingman was a front-seat passenger in Bertolluci's sport utility vehicle.

Bonner County Deputy Prosecutor Roger Hanlon alleges in a criminal complaint that Deardorff was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash. Deardorff is charged with vehicular manslaughter and aggravated drunken driving.

A preliminary hearing for Deardorff, a 53-year-old from Spokane, Wash., is set for next month in the magistrate division of 1st District Court.

Witnesses and emergency responders described the crash scene as chaotic. Four people, including Bertolluci's 1-year-old child and Deardorff, were injured in the wreck and the Jeep caught fire after the collision, which added another layer of desperation to the scenario.

Witnesses Jim Crosby Muskrat, Dale Roberts and Danny Knott, an off-duty Bonner County EMS provider, rescued the injured motorists from the burning SUV. Sagle, Timberlake fire district firefighters and the Sandpoint Fire Department responded to the crash, as did EMS officials from Bonner and Kootenai counties.

 Muskrat and Roberts have both raised question about the amount of time it took to get the patients, who were lying on the highway, packaged into ambulances so they could be transported to trauma centers.

Muskrat estimates as much as 30 minutes or more had elapsed before some of the patients were evacuated. He called the coordination at the scene "botched."

"This was not handled properly; it just wasn't. I just hope this never happens to anybody else," said Muskrat, who recalled disagreement among the providers over which agency would be transporting the patients.

Roberts corroborated Muskrat's account of transport questions at the scene. Roberts shared Muskrat's concerns about the safety of others in future collisions on roadways in Bonner County.

"There was a lot of dialogue going on about who was going with who," Roberts said.

Goodyear acknowledges there was confusion at the scene, which featured overwhelmed initial responders, evolving triage priorities, multiple responders who were routing communications through two different dispatch centers and the inadvertent establishment of two incident commands. Goodyear said the redundant incident commands resulted from responders being dispatched from different counties.

However, Goodyear does not believe the fog of confusion overtook the grim math of a blunt, highway-speed collision.

"I don't think that the minor delays that occurred resulted in anybody dying because they didn't get timely treatment. The mechanism and extent of the injuries would've resulted in the same outcomes," Goodyear said.

Bonner County EMS Chief John Givens gave county commissioners a similar assessment when response questions were raised at a board meeting on Tuesday. Givens said the patients were delivered to Kootenai Medical Center within the "Golden Hour," the emergency medical concept which holds that the key to a patient's survival can hinge upon prompt arrival at a trauma center.

"Patient care didn't suffer," Givens said.

Goodyear said the post-crash briefing between the agencies will bring about enhanced reliance on a statewide EMS frequency to speed and coordinate communications, clearer identification of incident command staff and a dedicated phone line directly linking Bonner and Kootenai dispatches, an improvement which was already in the works.