Survivor Recalls Surge Of Rocks, Mud

Russell Kindred thought it was just a little snow falling off trees onto U.S. Highway 95 when he stomped on the brakes of his Mercury Cougar.

“I looked up and all I saw was mud. It was all of a sudden … there was no warning,” the 37-year-old sailor in the merchant marine said Thursday from his hospital bed at Deaconess Medical Center in Spokane.

A sea of mud, rocks and trees swept Kindred’s car off the highway just south of Bonners Ferry Wednesday afternoon. A rain-soaked hillside gave way, dropped 1,000 feet and pushed Kindred’s car off the road onto the ninth fairway of the Mirror Lake Golf Course.

“I had no idea what happened. I remember rocks and mud hitting me in the face and it knocked me flat.”

Kindred has a broken nose, his face is black and blue from being pummeled with rocks, and the rest of his body is covered with cuts. He had the dubious honor of being caught in the worst mudslide Bonners Ferry residents can recall. It was 15 feet deep in spots and stretched 150 yards.

Authorities said Kindred drove into the edge of the avalanche. If he had gone any farther before hitting his brakes he would have been dead under tons of oozing mud and uprooted trees.

“This was a one in a million chance. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Kindred said. “Thank God I was driving a big car. My brother looked at how much room I had to crawl out of it and said I was awfully lucky.”

Kindred’s crumpled, half-buried car came to rest about 50 yards from the road. The front seat was filled with rocks and runny mud. He thought he was going to be buried alive.

“The mud kept coming in and I knew I had to get out before it finished filling in. I saw a light and was climbing through the mud to it.”

Kindred escaped through a broken passenger window. Muddy, shaking and with a bloody face, he slogged through the slide back to the highway. A passer-by took him to the hospital.

Kindred expects to be out of the hospital in a couple days and will head back to Bonners Ferry. Friends saved photographs of the massive mudslide and his car since he never saw what wiped him off the road.

“I kind of want to see what I’ve been through,” Kindred said. “But it’s going to make me a little nervous driving back to Bonners Ferry.”

, DataTimes