Photo: City of South Lake Tahoe via rgj.com
Of all the places you want to be during a snowstorm, trapped inside a car with a dead battery would probably come last on the list. However, for one homeless woman from South Lake Tahoe, it was the only option.
The other day, South Lake Tahoe spokesman Chris Fiore revealed the details of a mid-February incident that led to the discovery of a woman trapped inside a car hidden under a mountain of snow, the Reno Gazette Journal reports. The strangest part of the story is that, despite her situation, she wasn’t making any active efforts to get out.
Just as strange is knowing that she would have never been discovered had a snowplow not hit the trunk of the car by accident. Operators were out to clear the street, and one plow hit the illegally parked car in the rear, which made the trunk pop open.
Illegally parked cars are a serious problem in the area, especially as regards snow-clearing operations, the aforementioned publication notes. Standard procedure for when snowplows hit these vehicles, which actually happens quite a lot, is to have the police come and file a report, then have the vehicle towed away.
This time, police found something more than just an illegally parked car: they also found a woman inside it, alive and well under all that snow. Fiore says that the driver of the plow and police officers saw the woman inside and started digging, clearing enough snow to be able to open the door to get her out.
She told them she’d been there for only a few hours. The battery was dead and there were signs she’d been living out of the car.
“With that much snow piled on top of the car... if the snowplow hadn't hit the back of it we could be having a much different conversation. She could have suffocated,” Fiore says.
“Judge for yourself with the amount of snow on top of that car. It could have been days that she was there,” he adds.
Either not aware of the immediate danger she was in or knowing she had no other option but to remain there, the woman didn’t make a single gesture to signal she wanted out, even after the snowplow hit the car, Fiore explains. Her identity hasn’t been made public because she hasn’t been charged with any crime, but the spokesman does say this: she’s 48 years old and she declined medical treatment after the rescue. She left once her car was towed away.
Just as strange is knowing that she would have never been discovered had a snowplow not hit the trunk of the car by accident. Operators were out to clear the street, and one plow hit the illegally parked car in the rear, which made the trunk pop open.
Illegally parked cars are a serious problem in the area, especially as regards snow-clearing operations, the aforementioned publication notes. Standard procedure for when snowplows hit these vehicles, which actually happens quite a lot, is to have the police come and file a report, then have the vehicle towed away.
This time, police found something more than just an illegally parked car: they also found a woman inside it, alive and well under all that snow. Fiore says that the driver of the plow and police officers saw the woman inside and started digging, clearing enough snow to be able to open the door to get her out.
She told them she’d been there for only a few hours. The battery was dead and there were signs she’d been living out of the car.
“With that much snow piled on top of the car... if the snowplow hadn't hit the back of it we could be having a much different conversation. She could have suffocated,” Fiore says.
“Judge for yourself with the amount of snow on top of that car. It could have been days that she was there,” he adds.
Either not aware of the immediate danger she was in or knowing she had no other option but to remain there, the woman didn’t make a single gesture to signal she wanted out, even after the snowplow hit the car, Fiore explains. Her identity hasn’t been made public because she hasn’t been charged with any crime, but the spokesman does say this: she’s 48 years old and she declined medical treatment after the rescue. She left once her car was towed away.
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