Highway 552x fatality - Witnesses fought to save four-year-old
Intern reporter
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| Emergency personnel scramble to aid an injured father and four-year-old son after an accident involving a semi-tanker and a pick-up truck on Highway 552X west of Okotoks on July 13. photo by Gregory Rogalsky |
A Calgary man who was one of the first on the scene of an accident that claimed the lives of an Okotoks father and his four year-old son said he can't stop thinking about the impact the crash will have on the remaining family members.
Gregory Rogalsky said as he and a friend approached the accident scene they could tell immediately something was wrong.
'I saw debris on the highway,' he related.
When the pair arrived at the scene the five passengers of an extended cab pickup truck remained inside the vehicle.
Several minutes earlier a semi-tanker truck and the truck had sideswiped on Highway 552X west of Okotoks, demolishing the driver's side of the pickup.
The family had recently moved to Okotoks from High River.
Rogalsky said the mother and two children were able to get themselves out of the truck, however a four-year-old child, fastened into a car seat on the driver's side of the pickup remained unconscious. His mother pulled him from the vehicle.
Rogalsky said the distraught mother was holding the limp child and crying 'my baby, oh my baby'.
The driver of the vehicle remained trapped in the wreckage, his arm pinned in a mass of twisted metal.
Rogalsky's traveling partner, Dave Chouinard, asked the women to put the child down in order to perform CPR.
Chouinard, a 31-year-old pipe fitter trained in CPR, performed chest compression while the driver of the semi-tanker carried out CPR.
Rogalsky said it took approximately 15 minutes for paramedics to arrive.
'That was the longest 15 minutes of my life,' he said, adding he couldn't help but think of his own three kids, who are close in age to those affected by the accident.
The investigation into the accident is complete with no charges expected. The case will be closed following the filing of an accident report. Details of the report will not be disclosed.
The family's name is being withheld at the mother's request.
Investigating officer Al Palmer said she asked that she and her children be given time to grieve and have left to be with family.
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Grand Entry
Cody Lefthand and Corrie Lefthand follow the drummers during the Grand Entry for a pow-wow in Eden Valley on Friday.
- photo by John Barlow
Mad Cow Disease - MD declared an economic disaster
Sports reporter
With the advent of Alberta's first case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (mad-cow disease) and a three-month long ban on exports to Japan and the United States, the Foothills MD council has declared a state of economic disaster.
With no end to the border closure in sight, council felt it had no choice. The extent of the impact on the cattle industry could suffer was too frightening to consider without a pro-active approach.
'I can't get my head around everything that's going to happen,' said Reeve Roy McLean. 'But what has happened so far has certainly pointed towards a lot of problems. I think it's bigger than I can see. It's all written up there in stone that it's going to happen to us.'
Councillor Gerrit Top agreed, 'It's going to get worse. I personally think that if this keeps going on the grain industry is going to suffer through it, your land value is going to go down and it's going to reverberate throughout the entire (municipal district).'
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