Couple lose possessions in moving accident

HAYDEN — Chuck and Marjo Norlin packed up everything to move from Yuba City, Calif., to Hayden, only to see their furniture and nearly all of their household possessions destroyed during the journey north in an Oregon snowstorm.

"Just about everything is just junk," Chuck Norlin said. "You just got to move on and complete our move and do what we came to do, and that's live in Idaho."

On Tuesday, they sat in borrowed beach chairs in front of their fireplace, warm and dry inside their empty Hayden home off Lancaster Road. Two weeks after the crash of their moving truck, they are sleeping on a borrowed mattress, and the snow piling up outside serves as their refrigerator along with an ice chest.

All their furniture and household belongings sit crammed in a truck parked in storage in a small town south of Bend, Ore., damaged from hours of exposure to the elements while sitting alongside a snowy highway.

On Dec. 9 the Norlins embarked on their 850-mile move north in a family caravan on Interstate 5 from Yuba City, their longtime home north of Sacramento. They cut through Oregon at Klamath Falls, journeying on Highway 97 on the second day.

Chuck Norlin's brother drove his motor home, pulling a boat. The Norlins' grandson sat behind the wheel of the 26-foot rented moving truck, pulling a 6-foot-by-12-foot cargo trailer. Marjo Norlin followed in her car and Chuck Norlin brought up the rear in his pickup truck, pulling another vehicle.

The accident occurred 2 miles outside Crescent, Ore., when the rental truck eased around an uphill curve in the road before slipping on snow and ice and slamming into a snowbank on the side of the highway, flipping onto its side.

"I saw him slipping," Marjo Norlin said. "I watched the trailer just fishtailing, and I was thinking, 'Oh my gosh.'"

"The hardest part was walking across the highway to look into the cab to see what happened to my grandson," Chuck Norlin said. The grandson, 24-year-old Zack Applegarth, was OK. He joined the Norlins to help them with the move.

"He was standing up looking through the windshield," Chuck Norlin said. "He just said, 'Get me out of here, will ya?'"

Their belongings were broken by the accident and damaged by snow and water.

Once a tow-truck came for the wrecked rental truck, their belongings were removed to help get the rental truck tipped back onto its wheels. Once the truck was emptied and towed, their belongings sat for hours alongside the highway until they could all be re-loaded — with snow still covering them — into a new moving truck. That truck was driven to Crescent, and there it sits.

The Norlins and their family continued on to Hayden, arriving on Dec. 11. Since then they have been assessing the damage.

Chuck Norlin, 74, said the insurance they got for the rental truck might not cover the accident because his grandson was behind the wheel at the time of the accident. The rental company also says he shouldn't have been pulling a trailer.

"I don't know if our insurance is going to cover anything at all," he said. That means they will likely owe for the damaged truck.

They also owe $4,000 for towing, and the storage cost is piling up.

They have family to spend Christmas with — his brother moved to Coeur d'Alene, his sister and her husband moved to Post Falls, and his niece and her husband moved to Post Falls.

Chuck Norlin retired in 1999. He worked as a general manager in retail auto sales for 30 years. Marjo Norlin worked for a district attorney's office before retiring.

"I'm just glad we're all OK, and we didn't hurt anybody else," Marjo Norlin said.

Their daughter, Nicole Laubscher, told The Press it was her parents' dream to move to Idaho.

"Cost of living is cheaper and some family moved there ahead of them," Laubscher said Monday by email. "Family resources are extremely limited, but they are doing their best to try and help."

Chuck Norlin can be reached at (530) 300-2465.