Newfoundland woman describes harrowing rollover on remote highway with no cell service

A woman from a remote southern Newfoundland outport says she narrowly escaped with her life after a highway accident left her trapped with no cell service.

Kelly Willcott of St. Alban's was on her way to a routine appointment in Grand Falls-Windsor last week, but left a little earlier than usual to account for heavy rain.

"I knew there was going to be water on the road. Wasn't expecting it to be built up like it was," Willcott said.

"My wipers would not keep the water off of the windshield."

Willcott drove carefully over a bridge along Highway 360, taking her foot off the gas. She knew the road ahead was notorious for accumulating puddles.

And if the worst happened, there'd be nobody around to help.

"I veered over towards the white line. I couldn't see out my windshield," she said. "That's why I did that, because if there was oncoming traffic coming, I wouldn't have seen them."

That's when she hit the puddle.

"I just remember fishtailing across the road and I was trying to straighten her up. I know better than to yank the wheel, so I didn't yank it. I just, you know, pulled it a little bit, but I guess it was still too much," Willcott said.

"I mean, she was going to go wherever she was going to go. And I just remember seeing the ditch on the right hand side of the road coming at me."

Willcott can't remember whether the truck flipped first and then rolled twice, or the other way around.

Either way, she says, she was "shaken around like a rag doll," powerless to stop the vehicle.

"I just closed my eyes and just waited," she said.

Alone and helpless

When the truck finally stopped rolling, Willcott opened her eyes. She was hanging upside down, still buckled in, her truck firmly in a large ditch off the side of the road.

"I just remember I was trying to get my phone. Why? I don't know, because there was no cell service," she said. "It was just instinct, trying to get my phone."

Willcott groped around, finally finding her glasses, now completely demolished and useless. She felt around on the ceiling of the truck beneath her.

Her hand wrapped around a crowbar.

"I tried to hit the window out," she said. "[It] wouldn't budge. And I tried to kick the window out — I couldn't even do that. But then I started getting tight-chested." 

Hanging there helplessly, the pain from the wreck started to sink in. Willcott says she figured she'd have to just wait for somebody to find her. There was no way, she thought, she could get out by herself.

Her chest continued to tighten. In a stroke of luck, only five minutes passed before help arrived. A couple of men, total strangers, pulled over to check on the flipped truck.

"I remember hearing two cars go by and I remember saying, 'Oh, please God, somebody was following me,'" she said.

The good fortune of another driver so close to her on one of the province's emptiest and most remote stretches of highway isn't lost on Willcott.

"You can be half an hour before you see another car on that road sometimes," she said.

The cars passed by, but one quickly turned around. She heard it come to a stop on the road. Moments later, a man called out to her.

"They said, 'Hello, anybody down there?' And I said 'Hello, hello, help," Willcott said.

The Good Samaritan opened her door. Willcott says she had her hand on her chest, struggling at that point to breathe. She let herself down from the inverted seat, landing on two sweaters she had in the car to break her fall.

Another passerby saw the accident and drove to his nearby cabin, where he used Starlink to call 911, Willcott said. From there, first responders came to her aid.

Willcott says even a week after the accident, she's still overwhelmed by gratitude for everybody who helped her that day.

But she's still healing from bruising and whiplash, she says, and wary of driving on a road without cell service.

"It should be on that highway," she said.

"I just did not expect it that day.… I thought I did everything right, but you know, sometimes it's not enough."

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