by David Flint
It was a busy weekend for the Stephentown Volunteer Fire Department and its Rescue Squad. On Saturday they responded to a hunting accident off of East Road up toward the Taconic Ridge. This call turned out to be a fatal accident in which a hunter from Pittsfield had his four-wheeler overturn and land on top of him. The SVFD was able to reach the site with their brush truck. According to Sgt. Mark St. Germain of the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Department, the victim, James White, 45, of Pittsfield, MA was hunting with two friends up in the woods in back of 660 East Road, but the other two hunters were not close by when the accident happened. White was pronounced dead on the scene by an Investigator from the Rensselaer County Medical Examiner’s Office and was transported to Albany Medical Center.
Saturday Crash
Stephentown Fire Chief Rich Burgess reported that on Sunday just after 4 am, his Department received a call about a traffic accident on South Stephentown road near the Columbia County line. A pickup truck had gone off the road. It struck a telephone pole snapping it in half and taking down power lines. The driver had somehow got safely out of the vehicle and made his way to a nearby house for help. Upon arrival the Fire Department found the power wires down and burning. NYSEG was called and they cut the power so the vehicle could be pulled out of the ditch and towed away and the pole and wires replaced. The driver of the vehicle had only minor injuries but was transported to hospital by the State Police.
Two Crashes In West Stephentown On Sunday
Two more accidents occurred on Sunday, both weather related. Both accidents occurred on a stretch of Route 43 in West Stephentown that the Rescue Squad is very familiar with. At about 3:20 pm they were dispatched to a two-car motor vehicle accident on the steep curve approaching South Road. There they found that a SUV with two occupants and a minivan with one occupant had collided, apparently due to icy conditions. The SUV was in the ditch on the westbound lane and the van was in the ditch on the east bound lane. Each had come to an abrupt stop against a telephone pole. Fortunately none of the occupants had anything more than minor injuries, and they were not transported to hospital.
Burgess said the road was extremely slippery due to the light snow and freezing rain. The State DOT was called to salt the road. After their truck had plowed and salted, they were requested to make another pass with more salt. The road was closed for about one hour to enable this and the clearing of the wrecked vehicles by two towing companies.
The second accident occurred later in the day at about 7:40 pm by Stone Bridge Pond. A car had slid into the guardrail on the east bound side and then went down the embankment through a break in the guardrail, taking down several small trees and coming to rest in the mud. Burgess said there was only one occupant in the car and fortunately that person, too, was not injured.
Burgess attributed both accidents to the slippery road conditions. Accidents are very common in these two areas, he said, when we have weather like we had that day. “The State DOT is doing the best they can with the cutbacks they were given,” Burgess said on Monday, “but unless the State can find money to spend on historically bad areas of these roads, we are in for a long accident season on Route 43. It’s only one day into December…”