Castlegar residents step up after vehicular mishap
By Kyra Hoggan
A Warfield resident is praising the quick minds and kind hearts of Castlegar residents after she was injured in a vehicular mishap last week.
Diane Ross, 47, was driving up Sherbico Hill with her five-year-old daughter, Madison, onTuesday when her Land Rover started to overheat.
“I pulled into the Husky gas station and lifted the hood,” she said. “I had only turned the radiator cap barely a quarter of a turn, and it just blew.”
Anti-freeze shot out of the radiator, hitting Ross on her arms, chest and the right side of her body, inflicting first- and second-degree burns. She was wearing a tank top, so her arms were bare and bore the brunt of the burns.
“I was completely panicked,” she said, adding one Husky staffer called 9-1-1, while another got ice from their ice bin.
“A pregnant lady in a black dress started spraying me down with the gas station’s hose, and a young man with a blue truck helped get Madison out of the car and closer to me.”
Shortly thereafter, first responders arrived and provided medical treatment.
“Everybody helped with my daughter – without all that caring and quick thinking, things could have been a lot worse,” Ross said in an interview from her Warfield home the following day.
“I guess there are two things I’d like to tell people,” she said. “First, I’d like to say thank you to all those people who helped us.
“Second, it’s a good warning to people – I’m smart, and I’m mechanically inclined. I know better (than to open the rad cap), but I did it anyway. I just wasn’t thinking. That kind of lack of attention can be really dangerous.”
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