Two Chumstick Highway Accidents in Less Than 24 Hours

Chelan County Fire District 3 were busy between May 5-6, with two accidents on Chumstick Highway occurring less than 24 hours apart.

The first accident was on Chumstick Highway and milepost 5, on May 5 around 4 p.m. The accident involved a female and a young male child. The woman was driving north on Chumstick Highway and apparently veered into the opposite lane, hitting an empty parked car.

Both the woman and the young child were transported to Cascade Medical. Details of their injuries are unknown at this time.

Assistant Chief Glenn Brautaset commended the work of the neighbors near the accident for providing the two victims warmth and medical attention while firefighters were in route to the scene.

“They deserve a shout out. Many of the neighbors heard the crash and came over and assisted with medical care immediately and got them out of the vehicle and got them into a warm safe place until we arrived. So, it was a good interaction by the neighborhood there and helping in that circumstance.”

The second accident was on Chumstick Highway at milepost 3, in May 6 around 7 a.m. Assistant Chief Brautaset was still finishing his coffee when he got a call that a 68-year-old male driver veered off the road, hit a tree, rolled over, and ended up 15 feet away from the railroad tracks.

“It was a little bit scary because we had a train that was only approximately three minutes behind us that was coming down to the Chumstick and we had to rapidly advise Burlington Northern to slow down the train, which we were not able to do on time.”

Luckily, Leavenworth firefighters were able to protect the driver as the train rode by. They were able to extract the driver without any extract cation tools. The driver sustained minor injuries and was transported to Cascade Medical.

He states that since both cars involved in the two separate accidents were newer models and thus had more airbags, the drivers were in a much better condition.

“I think a nice contributing factor to everybody's safety was that these vehicles were all relatively new and had lots of airbags. All those airbags deployed, and I think [that] kept people alive.”