Maintenance shed becomes temporary day care center
The unusual becomes routine when you’re responsible for keeping an isolated stretch of a mountainous highway safe for travel in the winter.
ITD’s Powell maintenance crew is accustomed to battling the elements, snowdrifts, avalanches and vehicle crashes. A post-Thanksgiving patrol added a new challenge and a new innovation. Don Armstrong and Dan Potter turned the maintenance shed into a temporary day care center.
They also added a new title to their better-known Transportation Technician Sr. – status – Nanny Technician, advanced.
Armstrong and Potter were inspecting circuitous U.S. 12, approximately 90 miles east of Kooskia at about 9 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 25 when they met a vehicle headed the opposite direction, westbound toward Lewiston. They watched in their mirrors as the car failed to negotiate a curve, flipped over and came to rest on its passenger side.
When they arrived at the crash site, they found the driver standing outside the vehicle. Three passengers – a young mother, an infant of about 6 months, and a young girl about 2 years old – were still inside the overturned car.
Don and Dan helped the passengers out of the vehicle and contacted the Idaho State Police, which dispatched an off-duty officer from his residence about five miles away. Potter loaded the mother and children in his ITD crew-cab pickup and took them back to the maintenance shed to await transport. Armstrong, put flares on the highway and secured the crash scene until the ISP trooper arrived.
Potter shared part of his lunch with the guests – crackers, soft cheese and water for the children, and hot coffee for their mother.
The children slept through the night on a bench seat at the maintenance shed while their mother took occasional naps waiting for grandparents to arrive from Lewiston. What should have been a 3- 3½-hour trip took most of the night because rescuers drove past the Powell shed and ended up in Missoula, Mont., where the driver of the crashed car had been taken for treatment of minor injuries.
The couple transported him back to Powell, picked up the overnight guests and returned to Lewiston about 5:30 a.m.
“We and the family were very fortunate that no one was injured and the highway conditions allowed us to focus on the accident.” Potter said. “We were only four miles from the Powell shed and the ISP officer was at his residence only a few miles away. All of those things worked together to make a bad situation turn out okay.”
“This kind of thing happens all the time, but most don't have a happy ending,” said Rod Parsells, maintenance foreman for Lewiston-East (mileposts 128 – 174, the Montana border).
“They did a great job, and never said a word ... The crew is now calling Powell the daycare center, and Don and Dan are called nannies.”
The incident is a poignant reminder that ITD employees are indeed “first responders,” and that outstanding customer service is a driving force for those on the frontline who assist Idaho citizens on a daily basis.
Published 12-7-2012