Elk causes multiple I-90 crashes

MULLAN — An elk was responsible for not one, not two, but three separate vehicle collisions earlier this week near Mullan.

The saga started off at roughly 10:15 p.m. Monday night when Shoshone County dispatch was notified of an elk strike on westbound Interstate 90 at milepost 63.5. While the elk was killed on impact, this initial strike did not cause a major accident and the driver continued on their way.

Idaho State Police were initially dispatched to the incident, but the closest trooper at the time was in Coeur d’Alene and would not be available for 45 minutes or more. Idaho Transportation Department crews were also alerted and sent to the location with roughly the same ETA.

With this in mind, a Shoshone County Sheriff’s deputy assigned to the east-end of the Silver Valley was then sent to respond. On the way to the scene though, dispatch received a separate call of a domestic assault/kidnapping in progress in Mullan. The east-end deputy was then redirected to the in-progress incident and the west-end deputy was sent to the elk strike.

In Mullan, the responding deputy requested an ambulance from Shoshone County Fire District No. 1 be sent to his location, just in case any involved parties were injured.

SCFD No. 1 Cpt. John Miller and FF/EMT Parrish then left the firehouse in Osburn and jumped in the fast lane on I90.

While they were enroute, the west-end deputy who was sent to the elk strike came up behind them. Since the deputy was at a high-rate of speed, the ambulance slowed down and moved to the right lane to let them pass. The ambulance crew had no idea that this minor delay would change their destination completely.

The west-end deputy would be the first to the scene of the collision, but due to a call for backup from a Kellogg officer dealing with a domestic battery incident, they turned right around and headed west.

At approximately 10:30 p.m., Miller and Parrish were just coming up on milepost 63.5 when they saw a vehicle in the opposite westbound lane hit the deceased elk at full speed in the fast lane. The vehicle then hit the center median, rolled, and slid roughly 300 feet until it came to a rest.

“If that cop hadn’t been traveling that way and we hadn’t gotten in the right lane and slowed down, we probably would have just missed it,” Cpt. Miller said.

Reacting quickly, Miller and Parrish parked on the eastbound side and responded to the westbound wreck.

Once they got to the car, they discovered a single male driver, Claude Chen, balled up, up-side-down, in his seat. The two-man crew were able to extricate him from the car and determine that he only suffered minor injuries.

Miller stated that Chen was wearing his seatbelt at the time of the crash and it most definitely saved his life.

When Chen struck the deceased elk (the second time a vehicle had hit it that night), the force of the impact had pushed the animal from the fast lane to the driving lane.

This shift in position couldn’t have been more unlucky, as roughly 2-3 minutes later, another vehicle in the driving lane came upon the scene and struck the elk.

“So we had debris in the left lane, an elk in the right lane, we’re there with one guy checking the rollover crash, then we had to respond to this one (the third strike),” Miller said.

Thankfully, the female driver of that vehicle received only moderate damage to her car and no injuries.

Not wanting this cycle to repeat, Miller and Parrish quickly laid down emergency lighting in front of the elk to alert other motorists and moved the drivers to a safer area.

By 10:40 p.m., the east-end deputy and ITD crews had arrived on scene to assist. ITD utilized a front-end loader to remove the elk from the roadway. ISP would arrive shortly after to wrap up the investigation.

Miller, who has been in the firefighter/EMT career field for 10 years now, had never experienced a situation quite like this before.

“Normally when we respond to something like this, the crash has already happened and people are already there,” he said. “We were actually witnesses to this crash and I doubt that will ever happen again.”

ITD transportation technician Tyler Carrico agrees with Miller that this was truly a rare event.

“What happened the other night near MP 64 is very rare,” he said. “We might have an incident like that once every year and half where someone hits a large animal (elk or moose) and it causes several crashes.”

Carrico estimates that ITD normally picks up at least one animal on average a week that was hit by a vehicle on I90 from Wolf Lodge to Lookout Pass.

“90% of the time, we won’t get a call from law enforcement about animals that are hit because, frankly, they didn’t get a call about it because the party that hit the animal didn’t report it,” he added. “Unless the animal is still in the lane of travel after an incident, we’ll be notified most of the time.”

Cpt. Miller was pleased with how his crews handled the sudden incident and was thankful to all the assisting agencies.

Both Miller and Carrico stress that motorists should be vigilant when traveling through rural areas (such as the Silver Valley) where wildlife could be present — especially when it is dark.

“The overwhelming majority of animals being struck by vehicles happens during night time driving so I would tell motorists what I always tell them — Be very vigilant at night and in low visibility because you never know what is around the next corner and road conditions change quickly depending on the time of year,” Carrico said.