2 Hikers lost in Maine park die in car accident

I guess the good Lord figured now was as good a time as any to take these 2 dimwits... unfortunately one was pregnant so an innocent and their dog were also lost.

A couple of hikers who were found in a Maine park after becoming lost subsequently drove their car into the ocean and drowned.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/two-hikers-l...scued-1.1381169
http://www.firehouse.com/news/11057670/rescued-lost-hikers-drown-after-wrong-turn-in-maine
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...o=feeds-newsxml

ROQUE BLUFFS, Maine -- Authorities say two women who got lost while hiking in a Maine state park died in a car accident shortly after their rescue. Thirty-seven-year-old Amy Stiner, of Machias, and 38-year-old Melissa Moyer, of Sunbury, Pa., were killed Tuesday night when they drove their car into the ocean after driving the wrong way down a road. The county sheriff says Moyer was five months pregnant. Officials say the women became lost while hiking near Roque Bluffs State Park. A landowner found them and their dog and gave them a ride to a home. Authorities later took them back to their car. A short time later, the women called to say they had driven their vehicle into the water -- and then the phone went dead. The car was later found underwater.

Some people are visited by bad fortune. Some, it might be argued, have a talent for visiting it upon themselves. The latter makes many of us frustrated, angry, contemptuous. In fairness, I think many of us can remember situations where fortune tipped in our favour through no merit of our own.

Regardless of the circumstances, lives were lost unnecessarily. That is always a tragedy; we are all works in progress, and we cannot see the good they may have done in the world, before or after. Name-calling ultimately diminishes the caller.

My 2c.

I would guess there was something else going on. Shock likely from being lost, or hypothermia, drugs etc. Too bad there wasn't a real SAR debriefing with the two, might have prevented tragedy.

Good observation. Surely there is more here than meets the eye.

One of the other news articles mentioned heavy fog at the time, which might have contributed. Still, I've never driven fast enough to plow myself into the ocean, fog or no.

Ironically, same day as this story came out, there was a story of a girl that had a near-drowning in Brasil. As lifeguards approached to rescue her, a bull shark got her. She later died in the hospital.


Sometimes it's just your time to go.

I wonder if the dimwit part is driving in fog, getting lost, ending up in the ocean or not knowing how to get out of the vehicle? Since we don't really know the details of how the car got into the ocean, I assume it was thick fog, not that they thought they were on a NASCAR track. It can get pea soupy near the ocean and I don't think it would take much to get turned around or slip off the edge or a road. They wouldn't be the first to be unable to get out of a submerged vehicle. they may have been too terrified to know how to get out and unable to think or act rationally in a water-filled car.

I'm not going to start mud-slinging on their corpses.

Agreed. Thanks for giving them the benefit of the doubt. We forget to do that around here sometimes.

A different view from a different forum:

"According to the article the car sank quite far from the water's edge, out in deep water. An official suggested that they didn't even hit the brakes before they hit the water (presumably no skid marks on the ramp), which would imply the fog was so thick they had no idea they were heading off the ramp and so would have hit the water at speed and momentum would have carried them out far to deep water. If they didn't know how to swim, escaping the vehicle would have been suicide. My guess is they thought the car might remain afloat long enough for them to be rescued. Tragic."

There's no reason to call people names, especially after they have DIED. From the news reports, sounds like simply a tragic accident of making a wrong turn after a stressful ordeal combined with bad weather. And they weren't the first ones to drive off that boat launch either.

And sometimes it's your day to die.

Who knows how tired/stressed they were after the hiking incident. To then drive demanding roads in demanding weather would have been challenging.

After a particularly harrowing wilderness experience many years ago, I was a physical wreck for about 36 hours afterwards. Had I attempted to drive during that time it could easily have ended badly.

Condolences to their families.

How fast would they have had to been going? That's over half a football field from shore. Did the boat ramp paradoxically angle upwards to give them extra lift?

Evil Kinieval's longest jump in his career was only 141 feet (unsuccessful, BTW). On a lightweight motorcycle. Using ramps. Driving at high speed. And he was TRYING.

Looks like old Thelma and Louise here beat him totally by accident.

So, Evil Kinieval couldn't do it in perfect conditions while trying as an experienced professional but there's no possibility that there's more to this than just stupidity? huh.

I would guess that the car floated for a few minutes and it's forward momentum carried it that far.

Tides or wind, perhaps?

Probably a combination of the car's speed and the tide. IIRC wind and fog don't mix.

Water provides great resistance to stopping forward motion. A car would not float far. You fire a rifle bullet into water, and you'll be lucky if it goes 6 feet before totally stopping. Check out this video, at the 2:32 minute mark and at 2:43, so see a demo of this (and no comments about the wisdom of firing your AK47 underwater!) http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cp5gdUHFGIQ The scene at 4:33 is awesome too (although unrelated to our car-into-the-water discussion).

Rifle bullets travel a lot faster than cars. If the car indeed floated for 175 feet, it would have probably taken several hours to do so, allowing enough time to escape. But the women did manage to phone dispatchers on their cellphone (underwater?) after the event, so maybe they were preoccupied with chatting and forgot to try to escape.

IF the report of 175 feet is accurate, this whole things seems so implausible as to be almost laughable. It simply makes zero sense as reported.

Duh! LOL!

Wind and fog can mix. I have seen 40 knot winds and 25 foot visibility. It gets very foggy on the Channel Islands (USA).

It sounds like they simply made a left instead of a right (or vice versa) and ended up in th drink instead of on the main road. A simple but costly mistake.

How cold was the water, I wonder. They'd been lost in the fog until "just a few minutes earlier". Is it possible that the combination of elements were just too much for them? It was chilly here yesterday. If it was there too, hypothermia would have been a risk, especially with the dampness of the fog.

It took an hour for the rescue crew to reach the car. Is it possible that the tide moved the vehicle during that time?


More important than udging and name calling, what can we learn from this?

-don't drive in thick fog, especially on unfamiliar roads and/or at night?
-roll down or break the windows to get out of a submerged vehicle?
-if you rescue someone who's lost, maybe stay with them a for a bit, or follow/lead them out, instead of just assuming they are OK?
-learn to swim to survive and make sure your kids do as well?
-activate the locator GPS thingy on your cell phone?
-always carry a PLB?

I can only guess currents, one heck of a current at that. Or... it's fairly shallow and the women continued to drive until they hit a drop off.

Unless there are further reports or someone knows the area, we'll never know for sure.

Once the water is above the floorboard I think ocean currents can rapidly drag a vehicle offshore. It happens in flash floods.


I suspect the lesson may be that once you can't see the road don't just slow down: stop entirely! Once every other year or so I get caught in fog or rain so thick that there is no speed I can travel at and still see far enough ahead to stop. So I pull over and let everyone else pass me.