An alert helicopter crew helped to rescue stranded motorists near Groundhog Reservoir on the night of March 16.<\/p>\n
Dolores County Sheriff Jerry Martin said two females and a male were traveling in a Chevy Impala on the Dolores-Norwood Road when they encountered deep mud and snow and slid into a ditch. Their names were not released.<\/p>\n
Martin said the 71-year-old male began walking back down the road to try and find help. The trio had no overnight gear or supplies.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a rescue helicopter from San Juan Regional Aircare was returning to Farmington when crew spotted the disabled car in the remote area.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe came across the vehicle using our night-vision goggles,\u201d said Steven Malarchick, a member of the crew.<\/p>\n
The helicopter landed and provided the females in the car blankets. They called in the accident and then transported the male back to Cortez, who had already walked four miles.<\/p>\n
Rescue units from Dolores County sheriff\u2019s office responded and pulled the vehicle out of the ditch, and the females were able to drive out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really appreciate the rescue helicopter doing what they did,\u201d Martin said. \u201cOtherwise, no one would have known about it, and the rescue would have been delayed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The temperature that night was in the low 20s.<\/p>\n
Martin said his deputies have been responding to more stranded motorists on the Dolores-Norwood road during winter. The road is not closed to allow access to private homes, but it is impassable by car much of the winter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
sighting saves motorists<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6363],"tags":[188,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ds-news","tag-dolores-star","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113706\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113706"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}