Bristol woman survives fall into New Haven river

Author: Amanda Cormier

It has been more than a month since 64-year-old Lorraine Clark of Bristol survived her car's plunge into the New Haven River, but there remain three moments that she does not understand.

She doesn't understand how the green car that straddled the lane line on River Road did not see her swerve and fishtail through slush and ice, pushing her over the bank. She doesn't want to understand.

"I don't know if they saw me go over," she said. "I want to say no. In the back of my mind, I want to think they didn't see me go over."

As she watched the freezing water rush into the car, she remembers telling herself not to panic. The doors to her Pontiac Grand Am locked automatically each time she turned the ignition, and she could not pry open the door.

"I think it was while I was in the car, when the water starting rising, when all of my five kids flashed before my eyes," she said. "That was scary. That's when I thought I was going to die.

She doesn't understand how, after what seemed like hours of pushing and prying against the door, it seemed to open on its own accord as the icy water rose to her chin.

"I heard the door when it opened," she said. "Something just pulled me right through. Nobody believed me. To this day, I don't think anyone believes me. Someone or something opened that car door."

Clark perched on the roof of her car as it sank, waiting for someone to see her. When a few cars passed by and none of them stopped, she jumped.

And she doesn't understand how she mustered enough strength to paddle through eight feet of rushing current towards the bank, even though she said she does not know how to swim.

"They say you've got an inner strength that you don't know you've got until something like this happens and it surfaces," she said. "It was a shot of adrenaline. I just wanted to save myself because I knew there was nobody down there to help me. If you want to live you help yourself. If you want to die, you just sit there and die."

Numb from being submerged in 19 degree water and exhausted and bruised from her efforts to open the door and swim, Clark lay on the road and yelled for help. After a few cars went by, a white truck "with a big red light" pulled to the side of the road. New Haven Fire Chief Michael Dykstra had first seen her car in the river and soon saw Clark at the side of the road.

Dykstra tried to lift Clark off the road but she was soaked and unable to move. Another passing motorist pulled over to assist him and together they carried Clark to Dykstra's car.

A rescue squad transported Clark to Porter Hospital, where she says it took three hours to warm her up after suffering hypothermia. Clark was able to go home the next morning, but her recovery was far from over.

"I can't travel River Road anymore," she said. "I still have nightmares and panic attacks. I'm just taking it one day at a time."

The task of recovering important valuables - her wallet and her car license plates for the insurance company's records - fell to two of her sons, who returned to the river the morning after the accident. Two rescue trucks had hauled the car from the river bottom, but Clark's wallet had not come up with it.

"They were in water up to their knees," she said. "My oldest boy said he was going to find my wallet, he said he knew it was down there. Two pieces of ice were holding my wallet against the bank. My wallet was just sitting there, almost waiting for someone to find it."

Clark needed both of the car's license plates for the insurance company, but the front bumper had fallen off the car. Her son, Ricky, spotted the bumper wedged between two chunks of ice, but at the other side of the river. They turned around to head back up the bank, knowing it would be nearly impossible to get to the bumper.

"All of a sudden there was a loud crack," she said. "He turned around, and the ice had cracked and let that bumper loose and down the river. And it set right at my son's legs."

Clark said she is in the process of trying to move on from the terror she felt that day. She tries not to relive the experience to her concerned family and friends too often. She plans on replacing each of the 40 CDs she kept in the car. And each day, she says, she says a prayer of thanks for her life.

"I thank God every night before I go to bed that I had a guardian angel that got me out of that car," she said.

On the day after the accident, her son managed to also salvage a guardian angel decoration that hung from her Pontiac's rearview mirror. It rode with her everywhere before the accident. It currently hangs from the rearview mirror of her new 2007 Chevy Cobalt, the car she continues to drive to and from work every day.