EMS crews rescue woman from her mangled SUV
CRANBERRY TWP — Emergency crews were drenched in sweat as they spent more than an hour Monday morning at the scene of a vehicle accident on Unionville Road that hospitalized one person.
Fire, EMS and police were dispatched at 6:52 a.m. to a one-vehicle accident near Unionville Road's intersection with Graham School Road.
Cranberry Township Fire Chief Scott Garing said when they arrived, they found an SUV teetering on its driver's side along a hillside off the road's southern berm. He said despite the vehicle being wedged onto a tree, stabilizing the SUV was still an issue.
“We used a rope system on the front with chains, and we used Airtex trucks too,” Garing said.
Garing said once the SUV was stabilized, the firefighters and EMS turned their attention to the driver, a woman who was the lone occupant and was trapped inside.
“The dashboard and steering wheel pushed down on her legs, pinning her to the floor,” he said. “The extraction took a while because of the complexity of it.”
Despite the precarious position, Garing said the driver remained conscious for the duration of their extraction, which involved first cutting a hole in the roof to give them room to work and then tunnelling through the dashboard and steering column to free the driver.
Garing said as the woman was being loaded into an ambulance, a helicopter arrived at a landing zone staged nearby and the woman was taken by air to a Pittsburgh hospital.
Her condition upon leaving the scene was unknown.
Around 8:30 a.m., tow trucks began lining up equipment to pull the vehicle free from the hillside. Throughout the incident, firefighters blocked traffic along Unionville Road between Graham School Road and Deep Lake Drive intersections.
Cranberry Township, Harmony, Adams Area and Beaver County's Big Knob fire departments as well as Cranberry Township EMS and police all assisted at the scene on a muggy morning.
“It was hot, and there was a lot of work going on,” Garing said.
No additional information about the woman's condition was available as of press time.
