Valentine’s Day chocolates help woman survive crash

NELSON, B.C. – Determination, an alert boyfriend and Valentine’s Day chocolates helped a woman survive nearly two hours after her sport utility vehicle flipped into the icy Kootenay River, officials said.

The boyfriend, concerned when the woman was called to work early Monday but failed to appear, found the SUV after spotting a faint set of tire tracks running from an icy road into the river early Monday near this south-central British Columbia town, said Simon Grypma, assistant chief of Nelson Fire and Rescue.

“The first stroke of luck was that he even found the tire tracks in the snow,” Grypma said. “They were so faint, you could barely see them.”

Nelson and Beasley search and rescue personnel found the Pass Creek woman’s vehicle upside down in about five feet of ice-covered water and about 30 feet down a bank, Grypma said.

“We had to break through the ice to get to the vehicle,” Beasley Fire Chief Al Craft said. “We tried all the doors, popped the window. We couldn’t open anything.”

Only after a tow truck pulled the vehicle over to one side could Craft even see the woman.

“She was stuck between the two seats with her head in front of the back seat,” he said. “She was breathing out of an air space near the foot well.”

The woman found a heart-shaped plastic container of chocolates she got from her family floating in the vehicle and began eating them, “which I think helped,” Grypma said.

The candy probably provided enough energy to raise her body temperature slightly, helping to delay the onset of hypothermia, he explained.