Cell phone, 911 dispatchers save accident victim

By Rose Hooper

He should know. Sunday evening he and other emergency personnel rescued a woman whose vehicle had plummeted down a 30-foot embankment off the Blue Ridge Parkway. "What saved her," said Nicholson, chief of the Balsam Volunteer Fire Department, "was her cell phone."

Shortly after 9 p.m. on a drizzling, fog-engulfed Sunday evening, 38-year-old Elizabeth Jarrell of Dallas was driving along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Suddenly, a four-wheel drive vehicle "came around a curve very fast," heading towards her and causing her to swerve off the road. Her car flipped several times, landing in a ravine. In the dark of the night, covered by a canopy of trees, Jarrell could tell her car was leaning precariously against the mighty evergreen that broke her fall. She was afraid to move, terrified that even the slightest movement could send the car even further down the steep, rugged mountain.

Timidly, she reached for her cell phone. Her distress call came through to the Jackson County Emergency Dispatch at 9:13 p.m. and was answered by dispatcher Joanna Nicholson, Johnny wife's.

A seven-year veteran of the emergency dispatch office, Nicholson immediately tried to calm the frightened Jarrrell and determine her location.

"I could tell she was very scared and concerned for her life as she told me about her accident... how her car flipped a couple of times going down an embankment," said Joanna Nicholson, who immediately got Jarrell's cell phone number.

That bit of quick-thinking on Joanna's part helped save Jarrell.

"I lost her on the phone a couple of times and had to call her back," said the dispatcher. "I'd tell her, 'Stay with me, honey; I need to talk to you.'"

Joanna Nicholson asked Jarrell to check her injuries... to see if any part of her body was paralyzed or broken. "She told me she was an epileptic and that her head was bleeding, but everything else seemed fine."

While Joanna Nicholson kept Jarrell on the phone, fellow dispatcher Brian McMahan tried to pinpoint Jarrell's location. Jarrell, however, was "so shook up," Joanna Nicholson said, that "she had no idea where she was."

"I asked her where she turned off and what was the last thing she saw. Brian had the map and kept telling me landmarks to ask her about," Joanna Nicholson said.

The dispatchers determined that Jarrell, out sight-seeing on a Sunday afternoon, was headed towards Asheville and was probably somewhere in the Balsam area. More than 100 rescue personnel and volunteers began the search.

"It was so foggy you couldn't see anything," said fireman Johnny Nicholson. A park ranger had driven by the location that evening but didn't see anything because of the fog.

Dispatcher Nicholson advised Jarrell to keep honking her horn so rescue personnel could locate her. Meanwhile, rescuers sounded their sirens to let her know of their approach.

"She was very concerned for the rescue personnel and didn't want them to get hurt," said Joanna Nicholson, whose reassuring phone voice calmed Jarrell during the hour-long search. While the dispatcher talked, her husband searched.

"I got to know a lot about Elizabeth in that hour," the dispatcher said. "I asked her questions about her family. She told me she had two children, ages 18 and 21, and she talked for awhile about them. I told her that I would like to meet her when this was all over, assuring her that everything was going to be O.K., that she would get out of this and that the rescuers would be there right away."

And they were. Rescuers found Jarrell at 10:30 p.m., pinned inside her wrecked car about two miles south of Balsam Gap.

"It was pretty rough going to get down to her," said Johnny Nicholson. "We took a Stokes rescue basket and tied it with a rope. The top had to be cut off her car to pull her out." WestCare EMS transported Jarrell to Haywood Regional Hospital, where she was treated and later released.

Assisting in the rescue were members of the Jackson County Rescue Squad, Haywood EMS, Haywood County Rescue Squad, and the Saunooke Volunteer Fire Department. Meanwhile, the Canada Volunteer Fire Department conducted a search at another point on the parkway, and Sylva volunteer firemen covered all fire calls.

"Joanna did an outstanding job keeping that lady on the phone and getting the help needed. Joanna and Brian both were very professional, and it makes us proud of our dispatchers who play such a critical role," said Mike Ensley, county emergency services coordinator. "We work as a team, and this was a true team effort," Joanna Nicholson said.

Following the dramatic rescue efforts, her husband Johnny Nicholson said, "I think every woman traveling, especially if she is traveling alone, needs to have a cell phone. It could mean the difference between life and death." His wife never leaves home without hers.

The search for Elizabeth Jarrell marked the second time this month that rescuers were called to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Two N.C. Forest Service personnel were missing for nearly 27 hours earlier this month when their helicopter crashed, most likely due to heavy fog in the area. Unlike Jarrell, the pilot and his crew chief were not found alive.

Back to Archive: 09/28/00.