A 68-year-old retired nurse from Washington state recounted how she pulled through five days trapped in her overturned car by surviving on rainwater in freezing temperature.
Lynnell McFarland was returning to her home in Spokane Valley from a relative’s memorial service on 18 November when her car slid on ice and overturned.
The 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse landed in a ditch between two trees about 100 feet from Highway 97 near Blewett Pass in Washington, fracturing her arms and knee.
Ms McFarland said she had her cellphone, boots and bottles of water on the front floorboard but was unable to reach them because of her injuries.
When phone calls to Ms McFarland went unanswered, her daughter Amanda McFarland reported her missing the next day.
“Friday morning, her neighbours told me that they hadn’t seen her. And that’s when I was like, okay, I think that this is more than just, you know, just, this is more than just her losing her phone,” the daughter told NBC-affiliated news network KHQ.
Deputies from the Kittitas County sheriff’s office found Ms McFarland’s location, which showed her to be on Highway 97.
The retired nurse said she had spotted a police officer and hunters later that day, but they had failed to see her car because of the trees.
Her daughter then resorted to social media and publicly pleaded with people nearby to check where her mother’s phone last pinged off a curve on the Blewett Pass.
Ms McFarland recalled she’d struck the dashboard which led to a compound fracture in her arm and another fracture in her knee.
“When I leaned back to cut my seat belt is when I saw my bones,” McFarland told The Spokesman-Review newspaper from her home.
When days went by, she prayed and said she felt her parents’ arms around her.
“My dad just passed six months ago. I could feel their arms around me, and God’s arms around all of us,” Ms McFarland said. “I just said, ‘Dear God, I know I’m going to die someday, but please don’t let it be in this dark, deep ravine, where I’m never found,’” she added.
She had no food and survived the five days by licking rainwater from the plastic bags.
Ms McFarland and her car were finally discovered by the crew of the state’s department of transportation after five days.
Once she was rescued and taken to a hospital in Wenatchee, Washington, Ms McFarland said she drank three pitchers of ice water.
The mother and daughter spent Christmas Day together at the apartment. “Finding me was a miracle. I wouldn’t call it stubbornness. Determination,” Ms McFarland added.
