7A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JULY 13, 2018
Rescue: ‘Everyone came to the rescue and came to help’
sergeant, agreed.
“I felt safe knowing they
knew what to do,” she said.
“The stars aligned for all four
of those gentlemen.”
Continued from Page 1A
Kanelakos seemed to wake
up once he hit the rumble strips
on the opposite side of the
road, Johnston said. Suddenly,
the Subaru whipped back to the
right, slamming into the front
of the pickup near the pas-
senger side. Johnston recalls
being jostled before the truck
and trailer came to rest in a
jackknifed position, while the
Subaru stopped on a shoulder.
Both vehicles, which were
in opposite lanes, quickly
caught fire.
“I don’t know how long it
was, but it seemed in my head
like it was about three sec-
onds,” Johnston said.
Kraushaar, a youth baseball
coach, and a caravan of cars
were traveling to Yamhill for a
game. After rounding a curve,
he could see smoke rising from
about a quarter-mile away.
“That was kind of like the,
‘Oh crap, nobody is here yet.
I better go help,’” said Becky
White, who was also going
to the game, and who would
comfort the Johnstons as they
awaited medical attention.
Kraushaar grabbed a radio,
which he always keeps on
hand, to call Medix Ambu-
lance Service. But the location
presented challenges.
The Elsie-Vinemaple Fire
Station is about 3 miles away,
but firefighters at the volun-
teer department are sometimes
away from the station until
they are notified of an emer-
gency via pager. Once they
arrive at the station and hop in
the fire truck, they often must
weave through a long line
of cars that tend to back up
when a crash happens on the
highway.
“That is our biggest worry
because it is so far from med-
ical care,” Rzewnicki said. “It
is our biggest fear when acci-
dents happen out there.”
Time seemed to slow
Firefighters would arrive
less than 10 minutes later, fol-
lowed by Oregon State Police
troopers and, eventually, ambu-
lances and Life Flight. But in
the bustle after the crash, time
seemed to slow down for the
people who were there.
“You could take one to two
minutes to get out there and
people say, ‘What took you so
long?’” Kraushaar said. “Sec-
onds seem like minutes and
minutes seem like hours when
you’re waiting.”
Once he approached the
damaged vehicles, Kraushaar
scanned to see who was in the
most danger. The Johnstons
— especially Eric Johnston —
were in bad shape.
“I didn’t think he was alive
any more,” Kraushaar said.
‘Guardian angels’
‘It’s hard to think sometimes about what they
did. A lot of people wouldn’t have done that.
They did it because it was the right thing to do.’
Kris Johnston
person who was involved and saved in the Highway 26 crash
Courtney Mattila
The crash occurred on a remote stretch of highway east of Elsie.
Moving people with poten-
tially traumatic injuries without
first stabilizing them is rarely
the ideal option. In this case, it
was the only one.
As Kraushaar and others
prepared to move them, Josh
Thompson, 39, of Warrenton,
approached the pickup from
the east with water in hand.
Thompson and a car full of
people were driving home from
a day at the zoo when they
stopped at the scene.
“People were running
toward us looking for fire extin-
guishers,” Thompson said.
Once the truck settled after
the crash, Johnston peeked to
his right. He saw his son passed
out and barely breathing on the
floor with his face against the
door.
Before helping him, he had
to figure out a way to escape the
truck despite sustaining a host
of broken bones. One of the
more severely damaged body
parts was his leg — twisted in
multiple places and as weak as
gelatin.
He started climbing toward
the back of the truck, where
rescuers had gathered to pull
him out. As he maneuvered
around the driver’s seat, he
used his hands to toss his leg in
the right direction.
As Johnston wriggled
toward the back, Thompson
reached in and doused him
with water as the flames began
to build.
“The heat was the most
intense thing I’ve ever been
around,” Thompson said. “At
that point, you don’t think. You
just do.”
After roughly 90 seconds,
Johnston positioned himself
near a window. In the time it
took for him to make it there,
the amount of smoke in the
truck tripled. Some people out-
side — including Kraushaar
— grabbed Johnston under his
armpits and pulled.
Once outside, the hyper-
ventilating Johnston asked to
be dragged — rather than car-
ried — from the fiery truck due
to the pain in his legs. Johnston
momentarily lost conscious-
ness at one point from the pain.
Someone asked Johnston
if anyone else was inside: “I
yelled, my son!”
Kraushaar scurried around
to the passenger side and
started jerking the door.
“He was angry,” Johnston
said. “He was yanking on that
door hard.”
Eventually, the door was
ripped off and the younger
Johnston was freed. Flames
towered about 20 feet in the
air above the truck and the tires
began burning and popping.
“You never know when
that’s going to blow up,”
Kraushaar said.
But the truck, while com-
pletely destroyed, did not
explode. The blaze was con-
tained until the fire department
arrived.
Bystanders were able to
extinguish the fire in the Sub-
aru with water bottles. They
saved Kanelakos and a pas-
senger, Peter Moreno, 53, of
Houston.
Eric Johnston and Moreno
were taken from the scene via
Life Flight, while Kris John-
ston and Kanelakos left in
ambulances.
“It was one of the coolest
things I’ve seen in all the years
doing this,” Kraushaar said.
“Everyone came to the rescue
and came to help.”
Rzewnicki, the state police
Kanelakos and Moreno are
recovering from the crash in
a Portland-area rehabilitation
facility, Oregon State Police
Lt. Andrew Merila said.
Kris Johnston arrived
home nearly two weeks after
the collision. He can only sit
in a wheelchair for two to
three hours before he needs
to straighten his leg, which is
covered by a 10-pound metal
frame. He hopes to begin walk-
ing in the next month.
Eric Johnston went home
this week — three weeks after
the crash — and is preparing
for a lengthy rehabilitation and
possible spinal surgery. His
many injuries include a broken
pelvis — held together by a
metal rod — and a broken jaw
that prevents him from eating
solid foods.
With medical costs and
missed work piling up,
Kris Johnston estimates his
expenses alone have reached
at least $150,000. He said his
insurance is capped well short
of that amount.
The family has set up a
GoFundMe page as well as
an account with TLC Federal
Credit Union and is asking for
donations.
“It’s not like in the movies
where people get in a car acci-
dent and get the money back,”
Johnston said. “It’s all gone.”
Some of the people who
helped at the scene have kept
in touch with the Johnstons and
have been promoting the fam-
ily’s fundraising. Thompson
and his wife, Crystal Thomp-
son, have been especially help-
ful. Thompson called John-
ston’s wife, Aundrea Johnston,
the day of the crash to update
her as events unfolded.
“I didn’t have to bury them.
I call them my guardian angels
— perfectly placed,” Aundrea
Johnston said. “I tease them by
saying, ‘You’re stuck with me
for life.’”
The rescuers, for their part,
are quick to deflect attention.
“I was just a small part in a
big story,” Thompson said. “I
was not the hero that day.”
Kris Johnston remembers
most of what happened out on
Highway 26. He is largely able
to hold his emotions in check,
except when he speaks about
the people who saved him and
his son.
“It’s hard to think some-
times about what they did. A
lot of people wouldn’t have
done that,” he said. “They did
it because it was the right thing
to do.”
Initiative: ‘This is a very poor idea for our state’
Continued from Page 1A
Robison also is chief peti-
tioner for a gun rights initia-
tive in Deschutes County. The
Second Amendment Preserva-
tion Ordinance would allow the
county sheriff to block enforce-
ment of local, state or federal
gun laws the sheriff deemed as
unconstitutional.
W.J. Mark Knutson, pastor
of Augustana Lutheran Church
in Portland, and Michael Cah-
ana, rabbi at Congregation Beth
Israel in Portland, were chief
petitioners of an initiative to
ban semi-automatic firearms.
They said they oppose requir-
ing sixth-graders to take a fire-
arms safety class.
“This is a very poor idea
for our state,” Cahana said. “It
accepts the status quo of guns
as an ever-present danger, that
there is no way to reduce the
overwhelming prevalence of
guns in our children’s lives. We
believe it is time to change the
status quo.”
Knutson and Cahana, who
lead the interfaith coalition, Lift
Every Voice Oregon, proposed
Initiative Petition 43 to ban
assault-style firearms for the
November ballot but had to sus-
pend the effort because of legal
obstacles to the wording of the
ballot title.
The group plans to submit
another initiative for 2020 to
ban the sale of assault weap-
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