http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/farrell032905.html


Accident Survivor: 'Please Let Them Be Coming for Me'

BY PETER FARRELL
c.2005 Newhouse News Service

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PORTLAND, Ore. -- "You're in a car going off a bridge -- you think
you're done," Melissa Borgaard says.

But at least 55 feet deep in the Willamette River, she began to think
she might survive her 60-foot fall from the Morrison Bridge in downtown
Portland. She struggled to release her seat belt and got to the water's
surface.

She could hear cheers from a crowd along the river wall. Floating on her
back in the fast current to save energy, she also heard sirens.

"They've got to be coming for me," she told herself. "Please let them be
coming for me."

They were.

People were amazed she survived Saturday and surprised that by Sunday --
bruised and scratched and hurting but not seriously injured -- she
walked out of the hospital and recounted her ordeal in an interview.

No one was more surprised than Borgaard, 31, that she kept her wits in
what was, even in a city of bridges, a spectacular accident.

The legal secretary talked about her fears and near-drowning, both to
thank her rescuers and to tell the world she is a good driver who was
aware of the traffic around her, was not speeding, was alone in the car
and was not distracted by talking to her sister, Alicia, on her
hands-free phone about dinner plans as she drove to a downtown hair
appointment.

"It was no different than if she had been sitting next to me," she said.

Alicia heard her cry "Oh! Oh!" before the phone went dead. She knew
something had happened but didn't know where. She started tracking
Melissa's movements to find her.

By then, Melissa was underwater.

The bridge surface's wet grating had felt as if she were driving on ice,
she said. As she began to slide and quickly steered to avoid a nearby
car, she overcorrected. Then she felt as if she had been launched from a
slingshot. "There wasn't anything I could do" as the back end of her SUV
swung around and sent her flying, she said.

She first crashed through the bridge safety railing. That impact
probably smashed her windshield. If it hadn't, she suspects, she would
have died, trapped in her car.

Her air bag deployed as she went off the bridge, blocking her view as
she fell toward the water. "I couldn't see, so maybe it wasn't as scary
as it could have been." She knew she was going off the bridge but had no
way to time a last breath before she hit.

Her car quickly sank to the river bottom, and darkness closed in faster
than she could believe. The Vancouver, Wash., woman decided she wasn't
meant to die after all.

"I struggled a little bit with my seat belt, and I thought, `This can't
be it,"' she said. "I thought, `OK, where am I at? I need to figure out
where my seat belt is."'

She felt for her door handle and located her belt release, not thinking
that she wouldn't be able to open her door against the pressure of the
water.

The car filled almost instantly. "By the time I got out of my seat
belt," she said, "I was already sort of floating upward," apparently
through the smashed-out windshield.

She saw light through the dark, dirty water she was trying not to
swallow, then more light. "Finally, I popped up."

She heard people cheering from the river bank, where several people with
cell phones had called 9-1-1 seconds after Borgaard went off the bridge.
She could not hear any of the people who were yelling for her to stop
swimming and to float on her back. But she soon decided that was all she
could do.

"I tried to tread water for a couple of minutes, but I was just so
tired," she said. "I don't know whether it was from struggling trying to
get out (of the SUV) or not being able to breathe, or the temperature of
the water or what, but I was exhausted and couldn't breathe, and I just
floated on my back."

Rich Tyler, a dive team rescue swimmer stationed at the Portland Fire
Bureau's main station a few blocks away, was lowered down the 20-foot
bank and swam about 100 yards to get Borgaard onto a Multnomah County
sheriff's boat that also came to the rescue.

"I really appreciated his effort," Borgaard said. "I don't think I was
ever shaken so bad in my life."

Marine deputies from the sheriff's office and the Fire Bureau dive team
will meet this week to decide about raising the car, which they may use
for a training session.

After what she's been through, Borgaard said, she isn't too worried
about the car.

March 29, 2005


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