Oregon Rescuers Weigh Life, Limb in Saving Crash Victim

RALEIGH HILLS --The blue 1993 BMW teetered on its side, driver's side down, pinned between a building and some landscaping boulders. The four-door car was so unstable that one push would have caused it to topple. Bernie Otjen, a division chief for Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue, knew that at any minute, the car could burst into flames.

Otjen stepped out of his Ford pickup and walked toward the BMW. A handful of firefighters and paramedics already there gave him an update. A young woman lay across the passenger compartment, her leg wedged under the smashed dashboard and floorboards.

He knew the woman could die. He'd been nearing the end of his shift about 2:20 a.m. Thursday when he got the call: "High mechanism motor vehicle accident," the dispatcher's voice said over the loudspeakers at the Beaverton fire station. That meant a serious crash, probably with life-threatening injuries.

Otjen also knew that a quick rescue was crucial to saving the woman's life. His 28 years of working for the fire department told him that in situations like this, the victim has maybe an hour before she must have the full services of a hospital trauma unit.

"Are we going to be able to get her out in a reasonable amount of time?" Otjen, 49, one of two supervisors at the scene, would explain later. "Or because of how she's trapped, will we have to take a drastic measure? You don't just have a Plan A. You have a Plan B and a Plan C."

The woman in car was 27-year-old Megan LaFave of Portland, who had lost control of her vehicle while traveling westbound around the curve of Southwest Scholls Ferry Road in Raleigh Hills, according to Sgt. David Thompson, a spokesman for the Washington County Sheriff's Office.

Police say that she was speeding in the 30-mph zone when the car flipped and that alcohol was a factor. The BMW pummeled through the wrought-iron fence, a Japanese maple and landscaping rocks of Langdown Florist & Garden, which has sat at the curve of Scholls Ferry near Jamieson Road since 1948.

LaFave was wearing her seat belt.

After Otjen arrived, crews from TVF&R, the Washington County Sheriff's Office and Metro West Ambulance started working.

The 24 people first stabilized the car using cable, wooden blocks and metal sheeting. Paramedics then started an IV and gave oxygen to LaFave through the smashed passenger's-side window.

The team used electrical saws and hydraulic cutting tools to clear away the metal from both the roof and bottom of the car to reach LaFave.

They worked carefully so they wouldn't injure her further, and they kept in constant communication.

Saw through six inches of metal here, part of the door post there.

"We cut, we stop, we look, we figure out," Otjen said.

Despite the noise from the crash and the whir of machinery --the saws, the generators for the tower lights, the heater to keep LaFave from getting hypothermia and the sirens --people living in the neighborhood later said they slept through the night.

After 45 minutes of cutting, the paramedics decided that they were not getting through the metal fast enough. If they didn't get her out soon, they would lose her. They contacted Oregon Health & Science University and asked that trauma surgeons rush to the scene. To get her out of the car, they would have to amputate LaFave's leg.

About 20 minutes later, three doctors from Oregon Health & Science University arrived in a police car, dressed in scrubs. They were ready to treat the crash scene as though it were an emergency room. They carried supplies of blood.

The trio was briefed on the situation, and as they approached the BMW to begin the amputation, one of the paramedics said: "Get the gurney, she's coming out."

After nearly an hour and 20 minutes of rescue work, LaFave was loaded onto an ambulance that raced to OHSU. During the roughly seven-mile drive, the OHSU doctors began treating her.

LaFave remained in critical condition in an intensive care unit Thursday night.

In Otjen's nearly three decades at the fire department, he had never experienced such a long rescue.

"You've got an adrenaline level pumping through at its max," he said. "You're doing everything you have ever thought --and even stuff you haven't."

Sophia Tareen: 503-294-5956; sophiatareen@news.oregonian.com

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