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Martin Lucas rides a snowmachine on a trail along the Alaska Highway
in Tok near the site of the collision that broke both of his legs
as he stood near his stalled machine that he was driving to school
in 1998. (Photo by Bill Roth / Anchorage Daily News)
Trouble
on the trail
Injuries mount
as snowmachines become part of Tok lifestyle
By S.J. KOMARNITSKY
Daily News Reporter
TOK - Alone in the dark, 13-year-old Martin Lucas thought
the bobbing snowmobile headlight coming toward him on the roadside
path meant help.
Seconds later, the teen, who had been on his way to school when
his snowmobile broke down, was knocked off his feet.
The snowmobile he had hoped to flag down on the heavily traveled
trail slammed into the back of Lucas' stalled machine at a speed
later estimated to be at least 50 mph.
Lucas was standing next to his snowmobile when the collision happened.
He was knocked off his feet and flung into the air. He broke both
legs just above the ankles, fractured his collarbone and lacerated
his liver.
The last injury might have killed him had he not been airlifted
to Anchorage for medical treatment.
As it was, Lucas spent four months in a wheelchair and another
six months walking with leg braces. The scars from the 1998 accident
have faded, but the X-rays still tell the story: Twelve inches of
surgical steel in four separate plates bracket Lucas' shattered
bones.
Christopher Summar, then 16, was the driver of the snowmobile that
hit Lucas. The impact spun his machine and sent it rolling. Summar
was pitched into a ditch. He suffered a broken wrist, a broken arm
and a concussion, his father said.
A motorist driving on the Alaska Highway adjacent to the trail
stopped at the scene just seconds after the accident to find Summar
sitting lotus style on the trail looking stunned. The youth later
told Alaska State Troopers he never saw Brooks or the stalled snowmachine.
The accident itself, while severe, has been just one of dozens
in this semi-rural outpost of 2,000 along the Alaska Highway. Here
perhaps as much as anywhere in the state, residents have come to
enjoy the pleasures of snowmachines - and to suffer the perils.
Ninety miles from the Canadian border at the junction of two of
the state's main highways, Tok is called the "Gateway to Alaska,"
a tribute to its status as the first major community upon entry
to the state.
Begun as a camp for road builders, it grew into an expanded service
center catering to tourists traveling to and from Alaska. The town
center is lined with RV campgrounds, cafes, gas stations and tourist-catering
gift shops with names such as the Stage Stop and the Trading Post.
People move through in predictable waves.
"Ferry night," for example, is what locals call the rush of tourists
who come up the highway from the south the day after the ferry from
Seattle docks at Haines.
In the summer, when temperatures can hit 100 degrees, this is a
community of motor homes, pickups and four-wheelers.
But in the winter, the snowmobile rules.
Groomed snowmobile trails parallel the roads and snake out through
subdivisions. Parking lots and driveways sport nearly as many snowmobiles
as trucks and cars.
"Snowmachines are a way of life up here," said Lucas' stepfather,
Damon Brooks, a mechanic for the local Arctic Cat and Ski-doo snowmobile
dealer. It is one of three snowmobile shops in town.
When Brooks isn't working on snowmobiles, he uses his own to haul
goods and work 50 miles of trapline. The lynx and foxes he catches
are sold to supplement the family income.
But the snowmobiles aren't just a modern-day replacement for the
trapline dog team. The family uses them for day-to-day transportation,
too, and often for fun, taking weekend trips by snowmachine to explore
wild country unreachable by road.
Surgeons used12 inches of surgical steel in four plates to put Martin
Lucas' shattered bones back together. In addition, Lucas' father,
Damon Brooks, said his son has emotional scars from the accident.
(Bill Roth / Anchorage Daily News)
PAINFUL LESSONS
Brooks' children, like many, started riding almost as soon as they
could walk. Now they ride to school and around town. They use snowmobiles,
Brooks said, like city children might use bicycles or motor scooters.
Snowmobiles are a fun, easy and convenient way to get around in
the frozen northland, but handy transportation has also brought
painful lessons on the dangers of mechanized travel.
Fourteen people have been seriously hurt in snowmobile accidents
in the past four winters and dozens more injured, according to Steve
Wahl, the town's sole doctor.
Fourteen might not seem like many people, but it stands out in
this small community of 2,000 where everyone knows everyone else.
Wahl combed through ambulance records after noticing the steady
stream of patients injured in snowmachine accidents coming through
his door.
He hasn't kept count of the people who were able to make it to
the clinic on their own, but he has a detailed accounting on those
delivered by ambulance.
What he discovered is the majority of the severely injured - about
two thirds by his count - are under age 18. Their injuries, he said,
range from broken legs to broken arms, concussions, fractured clavicles
and worse.
Fourteen-year old Keith Irons died after slamming his snowmobile
into the back of a pickup truck in 1996. The boy had been on the
way to a friend's house, his mother, Kathy Irons, said.
He was riding on the road when he hit a broken down truck parked
near the side.
The impact shattered Irons' helmet and shoved the truck several
feet forward, said Tom Dean, the paramedic who heads the town's
ambulance service. Dean was called to the grisly accident. He later
estimated the Irons boy had to be going at least 70 mph at the time
of the collision.
Speed is a common theme in local accidents, Wahl said, and many
involve collisions with stationary objects - trees, trucks, buildings
or, as in Lucas' case, a parked snowmachine.
Amazingly, most riders escape with relatively minor injuries, but
not all have been so lucky. Irons is the only one to die, but others
have suffered injuries that will haunt them for the rest of their
lives.
Fourteen-year-old Jeffrey Fales will need vaccinations forever
as the result of an accident this winter. He was thrown off his
snowmachine and ruptured his spleen, said his mother, Sue Fales.
Doctors had to remove the damaged organ, and because Jeffrey now
lacks the key part of his immune system, he will need the lifelong
vaccinations.
The physical damage, however, is only part of the trauma, his mother
added.
"He knows he's mortal now," she said, her voice breaking. "Kids
are not supposed to know that."
Lucas' stepfather, Damon Brooks, said his son has also changed
emotionally since his accident two years ago. He's no longer the
happy, outgoing kid who hoped to play college basketball some day.
He's more sullen and withdrawn. His father says he has struggled
in school. He can still play basketball but not competitively. Doctors
don't want him putting too much stress on the still healing bones.
In an interview, Lucas looked down often and kept his eyes hidden
behind lanky brown bangs. He answered questions with "I don't know"
and "I guess."
"You see," his father said later. "You see how he sits there with
his head down. He's a changed kid."
The family has changed, too. The Brooks are considering suing the
Summars. The Brooks believe Christopher Summar was driving recklessly.
The motorist who found Christopher told troopers the teen had passed
him just before the accident and was looking back as if he wanted
to race his truck.
"He was probably looking behind him when he actually hit (Lucas),"
said Shaun Komora, the motorist.
Christopher's father, Jeff, contends it was Lucas who was at fault.
Jeff runs the local Yamaha snowmobile shop. He said Lucas should
not have been standing in the middle of the trail. Furthermore,
he said, Lucas lacked reflective clothing and taillights. That made
him hard to see.
"What would have prevented this accident from happening was if
the other party could have had proper reflective lights on machine
and clothing," he said.
Brooks concedes the taillight was out because the snowmobile had
broken down, but he said his son was wearing reflective clothing.
Troopers charged Christopher Summar with reckless driving. In August
of last year, he pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of negligent
driving and was sentenced to 48 hours of community service.
His father, Jeff, said that his son took the plea only because
the family had a 'real p-- poor attorney." He still believes his
son is not to blame.
Whoever is right in this case, Wahl, the town doctor, and Dean,
the paramedic, said the real and bigger problem is more basic: It
is as simple as teens riding too fast.
"My personal opinion is there is no reason snowmachines have to
go over 30 mph, especially for teenagers," Dean said.
Dr. Steve Wahl of the Tok Clinic shows the X-rays of Martin Lucas'
legs after they were repaired with surgical steel plates and screws.
(Bill Roth/Anchorage Daily News)
SLOWING TEENS IS HARD
Manufacturers do make machines of limited horsepower and slow top-end
speeds for children, but they're not popular. Wahl remembers going
to a snowmachine shop in Fairbanks and looking at a model designed
specifically for children with a top speed limited of 15 mph. The
dealer, he said, was almost apologizing for the slow speed.
"I'm thinking there's no reason to apologize, that makes good common
sense," Wahl said.
But one's man common sense is another's unreasonable restraint.
Finding workable solutions to slowing down teenage drivers is difficult
in a place where the number of snowmachine shops rivals the number
of RV parks, where enforcement is limited and where there is one
simple reality everyone must confront:
Snowmobiles are fun to ride.
Even those whose children have been seriously hurt can't contemplate
a ban on young riders. That, they say, would be like telling children
they can't ride a bike or go play.
"You know, there's not much here in Tok, Alaska, for a kid to do,"
said Sue Fales, whose son Jeffrey continues to ride. "There just
isn't."
Snowmobiling, in her view, helps keep her son away from drugs and
trouble.
"Like the doctor told me, we could all sit around and do nothing
or we can do something and consequently something is going to happen,"
she said. "Even walking down the road has risk.'
Regulation in any form isn't popular with people who moved to this
rural outpost to get away from the confining rules of city life.
But views may be shifting.
Brooks, a transplanted New Yorker, admits to being cool to the
idea of licensing at first, but now says he could support it. He
wonders, however, if it would make any difference.
"It's hard to say if it would have prevented the accident," he
said, "because there's always someone who doesn't follow the rules."
Many have suggested that enforcement of speed laws would help,
but local state troopers say troublemakers are hard to catch.
"I've had more people elude me on snowmachine here than any place
I've ever worked," said trooper Randy Weed.
His experience patrolling the town, he adds, runs counter to the
declarations of parents that their children drive safely. The safe
driving lasts until the kids are out of sight of parents, Weed said.
Once teenagers are safely away from home, he said, they regularly
ignore stop signs, ride on roadways in violation of state law and
shuck their helmets.
When Weed does manage to catch a young snowmobiler breaking the
law, he said, the parents sometimes get upset at the trooper. More
than one has gone to court to fight their child's citation. Education
might help, Weed said, but he doesn't have any quick fixes to offer.
Meanwhile, Wahl watches people continuing to ride recklessly around
town and knows his next patient will arrive any time.
"It make you cringe to think when is the next one going to happen,"
he said.
* Reporter S.J. Komarnitsky can be reached at skomarnitsky@adn.com.
"Snowmachines are a way of life up here," says Damon Brooks, right,
stepfather of Martin Lucas, left, who was severly injured in a snowmachine
accident two years ago in Tok. (Photo by Bill Roth / Anchorage Daily
News)
©2000
Anchorage Daily News
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