Busy weekend for ambulances at Sand Dunes

Grant County sheriff's deputies and ambulance personnel tend to a man hit by a pickup truck while he was riding an off-road vehicle at the Sand Dunes Saturday afternoon. The man was knocked unconscious and taken to Samaritan Hospital, where he recovered.

by Erik Olson<br>Herald Staff Writer
| June 1, 2004 9:00 PM

Moses Lake hot spot sees 14 accidents during Memorial Day gatherings

This Memorial Day weekend, the Sand Dunes south of Moses Lake saw its normal amount of activity, and not all of it was safe.

Grant County sheriff's deputies responded to 14 off-road vehicle accidents at the Sand Dunes during the weekend. A 19-year-old Kennewick man was seriously injured when he collided head on with a pickup truck Sunday afternoon while riding a four-wheeler.

The man was flown to Deaconess Hospital in Spokane with a torn aorta, blood on the brain and broken femur, and his condition is unknown. He was not wearing a helmet, and witnesses said he had been drinking before the accident.

In another incident, a 22-year-old Snohomish man ran down a hill and jumped into a puddle of water near the lake head first. The puddle was only a few inches deep, and the man said he could not feel his legs.

He was flown to Sacred Heart Medical Center, then Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, and may have a broken neck and possible paralysis, according to police reports.

The Sand Dunes becomes its own small city every year during the Memorial Day vacation. People from all over the state haul their off-road vehicles, tents, barbecues, firewood and cases of beer, all in the name of having a good time.

Between 4,000 and 5,000 people were at Dunes at any given time, according to Grant County Undersheriff Ken Kernan.

It can also be a headache for local enforcement and emergency-service crews, who see an increased volume of calls thanks to the addition of thousands of people south of town.

Chief Deputy Courtney Conklin said the crowds were difficult to break up when gathered around a "donnybrook.

"It seems like they were more of an aggressive crowd," he said.

It was a busy weekend for the ambulance crews working for Grant County Fire District No. 5, whose station on Potato Hill Road handled the bulk of emergency-medical calls at the Dunes this Memorial Day weekend.

All told, Grant County 5 responded to 44 calls from Friday night to Sunday, and 28 came from the Sand Dunes, Barbie Maier, Grant County 5 EMS business manager and EMT, said.

About two-thirds of those calls involved some sort of trauma, such as vehicle collisions or rollovers, and the other one-third of the calls were alcohol-related, Maier said.

"It was a long weekend," she said.

With the dozens of two-wheelers, four-wheelers, dune buggies, passenger pickups and jeeps careening through the unmarked hills of sand, collisions are the biggest concern for law enforcement and ambulance personnel.

Three people were flown out of the Sand Dunes in a MedStar helicopter, Maier said, while numerous others were taken by ambulance to Samaritan Hospital.

Maier said she thought the windy weather might have caused a slowdown in activity, but the Dunes were as active this weekend as they have been in the past for ambulance crews.

Grant County 5 ran six ambulances during the weekend, with three covering the Sand Dunes.