Email This   Larger Font      Print This   Smaller Font Advertisement   ZACHARY KAUFMAN/The Columbian Grandin Chalcroft, 19, pedals past the spot where an unidentified man fell Monday from the ledge where the other rider is standing with his BMX bike. Chalcroft was riding at Pacific Community Park when the accident occurred and checked the young man’s pulse. “I never want to see that again,” he said.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008
By TOM VOGT, Columbian staff writer

Here is where the bike rider lost his balance, Ken Campbell said, standing on a narrow ledge. There is where he landed, Campbell said, gesturing down toward the unforgiving sheet of concrete.

The BMX rider fell 15 feet Monday evening, and he landed head-first. He almost landed on Jeffrey Pritchard, who was speeding along the bottom of the Pacific Community Park BMX bowl on his bike.

“I heard his bike scraping concrete above me,” the 16-year-old Evergreen High School student said Tuesday afternoon. “He hit right behind me. I thought he was done for.”

So, did the man survive?

Campbell, Pritchard, Tyler George and other witnesses who to tried to help the critically injured rider don’t know. The man was taken to Southwest Washington Medical Center, with what were described as life-threatening injuries to his head and neck.

They don’t even know where to go for an answer, because they don’t know the man’s name. Rescue personnel said the man didn’t have any identification on him. He was riding with two other men, who took off a few minutes before the accident.

None of the people who frequent the facility, which the county bills as an extreme-sports park, had ever seen the accident victim or his companions before. If he was a park newcomer, maybe that was a factor in the accident, Campbell said. There are a couple of places where an unwary rider can run into problems.

“They can throw you off and hurt you,” Campbell, 28, said. “If you’re not a local, you won’t know about them.”

And the unidentified rider lost his balance at one of those spots, where even local riders have had problems since the park opened in August.

“I ruptured my spleen on that same exact spot a couple of months after it opened,” Campbell said.

The east Evergreen facility includes a pair of concrete bowls. With its deep end, shallow end and sloping walls, a BMX bowl looks a lot like an empty swimming pool. At one point, the two bowls almost converge — separated only by a foot-wide ledge of metal-trimmed concrete.

The mystery rider was cranking up and down the smaller bowl, and worked up enough speed to “grind” his bike’s peg — a steel extension of the rear axle — on the top of that metal-trimmed concrete barrier.

That’s where the man lost control, Campbell said. He toppled over the concrete barrier and plummeted down the other side, to the floor of the big bowl.

He came to rest on his chest, looking back over his right shoulder, Pritchard said.

While several people called 911, Grandin Chalcroft took the man’s pulse.

“I was so scared to touch the guy,” said the 19-year-old Chalcroft, and what he found wasn’t encouraging. The man had a pulse, but barely, and there was a long time between breaths.

Three Vancouver fire and rescue units responded to the  accident at about 6:30 p.m. But Jason Black, owner of a Portland BMX shop, said he’s seen cell-phone video of the rescue and the local BMX community isn’t happy with how long it took the responders to get the man out of the bowl. Black said he’s already called Vancouver fire officials about it.

Campbell and Tyler George, who were involved in the park’s planning process, both have keys to a cabinet containing an emergency ladder. They deployed the ladder at the shallow end of the bowl and had it ready when fire and rescue personnel arrived. Then …

“They looked at the kid and stood there for one or two minutes talking,” Campbell said. “They wouldn’t listen to anybody about how to get down there.”

Vancouver Fire Capt. Kevin Murray said that the department will check its response. But he noted that Monday’s incident “was as traumatic a scene as you can have.”

Even though several agencies have staged drills at the bike park to practice extricating accident victims, Monday’s rescue required  a range of intensive life-support technology that had to be staged in the appropriate order. And the first responders to arrive might not necessarily have been the first ones to start treatment, he said.

“When an emergency is happening in front of you, the clock seems to speed up or slow down,” Murray said.

The victim was rushed to the hospital with what were described as head and neck injuries, and nobody was in much of a mood to ride after that. Still, a few members of the group hung around until 9:30 p.m. or so.

“Sitting here, discussing stuff,” Chalcroft said. “See if we can make this better.”

Several of them were back on their bikes Tuesday, including George, an 18-year-old Mountain View student: “I can’t stay away from the sport.”

Tom Vogt can be reached at 360-735-4558 or at tom.vogt@columbian.com.