CENTERBURG — For 45 agonizing, terrifying minutes Monday morning, in a car upside down in a creek and hanging from the seat belt, Sylvia Gibson said she kept thinking what a horrible way to die.
Water was coming into the car. Gibson was not able to release her seat belt because her fingers were too cold, and the bubble of air was getting smaller. With only 12 inches of air space remaining, she had to twist her head to stay above the water that was creeping in.
Then the 45-year old Centerburg woman heard a voice asking if anyone was in the car. When he climbed down the 12-foot embankment into the water in the creek, said Steve Brown, Gibson screamed in response. Brown told the News that he quickly called 9-1-1, then managed to get a door partly open. Reaching in, he cut her seat belt with a utility knife. The back window of the 2004 Pontiac Sunfire was broken, and Brown told Gibson to crawl toward his flashlight beam to escape from the car.
A Central Ohio Joint District firefighter, Doug Neighbarger, heard the radio traffic about the accident, and drove to the scene from his home in Centerburg.
Together, with the help of the COJFD personnel who arrived shortly after Neighbarger, they formed a human chain, moving Gibson up the bank and into the squad. Because of the length of time in the cold water, paramedics started treating Gibson for hypothermia . She was taken to Knox Community Hospital, where she was treated and released Monday afternoon.
Gibson said Monday afternoon that she is OK, other than being banged up. Her fingers were so cold, they were still tingling,she added.
The accident occurred on Eckard Road, on an S curve about two miles west of Centerburg. Gibson, a nurse at Grady Memorial Hospital in Delware, said she was on her way to work on the icy road about 6:15 a.m when her car spun around into a lawn. She said she just sat there a minute, and then the car just flipped backward down the embankment into the water.
Brown, who lives in Bloomfield, just over the Knox County line in Morrow County, was on his way to work in Columbus, about 7 a.m. when he saw car tracks going off the road. He said he drove by slowly, and was barely able to see the car in the water.
Brown’s quick action in the near disaster earned him a comendation from the COJFD department.
