MIRACLE ON 34 (1)

Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series about the recovery of Amanda Standley of Prescott from a head-on collision with a semi three months ago on Highway 34.

Barely awake on an early-morning drive from Corning to Creston on April 6, Chris Moore was suddenly jolted into the realization that a tragedy was about to unfold.

Moore, 21, of Creston became part of a three-vehicle drama on an otherwise quiet stretch of Highway 34 that morning. The end result is a medical miracle even the most seasoned trauma physicians at Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha can’t explain.

At 6:50 a.m., Moore’s Mitsubishi sports car had just passed the intersection of Union Avenue in Adams County, headed east toward Creston. He was about 10 miles from his destination.

Nearly home

Amanda Standley, 24, was even closer to home, driving her Chevrolet Lumina west toward the Union Avenue corner, which is a two-mile trip to her farm home near Prescott. She had just finished a daily workout at Southern Prairie YMCA in Creston.

Moore was alarmed as the Lumina drifted into the eastbound lane toward the driver’s side of his car.

But there was a bigger problem behind him.

Vernon Major, 72-year-old trucker from Essex, was driving a 30,000-pound semitrailer truck a short distance behind Moore, headed toward Des Moines to pick up a load of pork for a Council Bluffs company.

Standley has no recollection of what transpired in those next moments, but Moore and Major will never forget what they saw. And heard.

“The Lumina came abruptly in my lane, and I swerved over to the gravel,” Moore said. “It was so close it about took off my rearview mirror. I knew the semi was behind me and he wouldn’t be able to react with that big truck.”

For whatever reason, and to this day Standley can’t remember why, her car stayed partially in the eastbound lane as it headed straight for the 2000 Freightliner semi driven by Major. Neither Moore nor Major saw evidence of Standley leaning over or being distracted. The car was destroyed beyond any hope of detecting any mechanical failure.

“I was probably six or seven car lengths behind (Moore), and I saw her (Standley) coming down the highway and barely missed the back end of the other car,” Major said. “She stayed across the yellow line. I gave a little ground, thinking she would do the same thing. It just happened so fast ... bang. It hit the front of my cab, on the left side, and the car went underneath the truck. It took my left front fender and my fuel tank from the left side of the truck.”

At that point, Major lost control of his truck.

“I lost my steering, drifted off to the left side of the road into the ditch. I had a 40-foot trailer that was empty. She went on up the hill and somehow it got off the road. The driver of the other car came back to see about me. I couldn’t find my glasses or my cell phone. He said he had already called 911. Then he went on up to the top of the hill to check on her.”

Surveying scene

Moore’s heart was racing. He was sure he had just witnessed a terrible fatality.

“I saw the car hit the semi head-on in my mirror,” Moore said. “When I first stopped I had butterflies in my stomach. There was an eerie silence. I could smell the diesel fuel.

“I was even worried about the semi driver, it was so bad,” Moore noted. “It was pretty crunched up, too. The gas tank was ripped off and laying up on the road. Her car was trashed. Before I got to her I thought she was dead. But when I got up there she was moaning a little. Her eyes were closed. She was barely conscious.”

Emergency responders pried open Standley’s 1996 Lumina like a can of sardines, taking off the top and the doors. They even had to unfold it with jacks, like pulling out an accordion bellows. Standley was laying prone on the front seat. She had worn a seatbelt and the air bag had deployed, but the force of the crash was enormous.

“Take two vehicles going almost 60 miles an hour meeting head on, and it’s like going from 120 to zero,” said Chris Standley, Amanda’s 25-year-old husband who was wondering why she hadn’t returned from the YMCA yet.

Major suffered a broken nose and assorted cuts and bruises. He was treated at Greater Regional Medical Center in Creston.

Because the crash occurred in Adams County, Standley was transported by Life Net air ambulance to Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha.

Waiting for that to happen, however, seemed like an eternity to Chris, once he realized it was his wife. He got the call from his father, Mike, who had been on his way to Chris’ house to watch the couple’s two young children, so Chris could look for Amanda.

“When I went outside I could tell there had been a wreck, because I saw all the lights on the highway just south of our place,” Chris said. “I was going to go out and see if she had car trouble, or maybe she had stopped to help at the accident. It never really hit me that it could be her.”

As Mike came across Highway 34, he was told what had happened. Then he had to make the difficult call to his son.

“Some relation of ours, Alan Johannes, is a deputy for Adams County,” Chris said. “He told dad a gray Chevrolet got in a bad wreck with a semi, but not to worry because it had Wayne County plates.”

Mike instantly had a sinking feeling. Amanda’s parents live in Allerton, and she had bought the 1996 Lumina before she and Chris got married five years ago. She still had Wayne County plates.

“Dad knew immediately that it was Amanda,” Chris said. “He told me Amanda’s been in a bad wreck, and that I better head down there.”

Mike proceeded to the house to attend to children Cassidy, 3, and Hazer, almost 2.

Rescue work

There was heroic rescue work done in the next few minutes, but it was torture for Chris, who was told to stay back.

“Alan wouldn’t let me down there,” Chris said, “because they were jacking the car apart and cutting it up to get her out. I was a couple hundred yards away. He made the comment to me, ‘they’re trying to get her out. Just stay here and let them do their job, or you’ll just be in the way.’ They first told me she had broken her leg and some ribs, but they thought she would be OK.”

So, on the 80-mile drive to Omaha, Chris felt relatively assured that his young wife had averted disaster.

“The EMTs at the scene all did a terrific job,” Chris said. “We were so thankful they got there so quick and took such care.”

It wasn’t until arriving at the hospital and hearing a briefing from emergency medical staff that Amanda was in fact in grave, life-threatening condition with severe internal injuries.

Instead of hosting a party that night for friends to watch the NCAA men’s basketball championship game, Amanda Standley would be in a fight for her life.

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Wednesday: The recovery, and near normalcy three months after the crash.