Alaska survivor remembers -- and returns

Call is the volunteer Scout leader from Alaska who survived the electrical accident that killed four others five years ago.

Call and other Alaska Scout leaders were helping hired workers set up a big rented dining canopy. It was an unbearably hot first day of the 2005 National Scout Jamboree on Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia, south of Washington, D.C. Seventy-one Alaska boys were there with nine volunteer leaders.

None of the Scout leaders saw the silvery power lines in the bright afternoon sun, Call said. They were visible against the tree line but seemed to blend into the hazy sky, an observer said later.

The center pole was 28 feet, 8 inches tall, according to a federal investigative report. It touched a power line above as the leaders, under the canopy, were raising it.

There was a blinding surge of power, popping sounds, a loud electrical buzz, the screams of people inside and outside the tent, according to reports about the accident. One man was on fire.

The electricity arced to Call and it was a force beyond pain. It came in through his right little finger, and exited his toes, which were so damaged doctors later thought he'd lose at least a couple.

"I knew whatever had a hold of me, I was going to die instantly," Call, now 49, said recently.

Call and Scoutmaster Ronald Bitzer had been wheeling a dolly attached to the pole's base. Call thinks he must have let go of the dolly just as the pole stood straight. Bitzer's hands were still gripping the handles. He died, as did three others who were raising the pole: Michael LaCroix, Michael Shibe and Scott Powell.

"I could see my son," Call said. "The terror on his face. He could see that those men had died or were dying, as well as myself." Moments before, his oldest son, Kendell, and another boy had had their hands on the pole too.

He remembers saying, "Kendell, come get me."

Call said he realized that people shouldn't touch anything associated with a live electrical current. Yet, "I had this feeling that it was OK to ask my son to come get me."

Kendell didn't hesitate.

"He came in knowing full well that he shouldn't do it. Grabbed me by the arm. And it was just enough to stir me. It blew him off his feet," Call said. "The electricity stayed for a few more seconds and then, all of a sudden, it quit."

His son wasn't hurt.

The extent of the physical damage Call suffered wouldn't be apparent right away.

He spent a day and a half in the hospital, then returned to the jamboree. The two sons there stayed too. Call said he couldn't bear to go back to Anchorage right away and face the other families, to explain why he lived, why other men died. LaCroix was one of his best friends.

Some boys left. The way the jamboree community rallied around those who stayed created a powerful, spiritual experience that helped them deal with the trauma, he said.

Call is a dentist and he returned to work for a time. But the electrical surge through his body weakened and damaged his muscles, he said. He didn't have the strength or dexterity in his hands to practice dentistry as he had. He went on medical disability last year.

Now Call and his wife, Paula, are back in Virginia as volunteers for the 2010 jamboree, the first one held since the fateful 2005 event. Their youngest son is there too. Call is participating as a lay chaplain with the Mormon church. He said he wants to give back, to put his arm around those who helped, to come closer to conquering those worries deep inside.

"It's always one of those things. Why did I get to come home? Why did no one else?"

Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.