Interstate Towing, using its 60-ton recovery truck, pulled the Dodge Ram 1500 up the launch at the Middle Pond Boat Ramp on May 18. The truck was recovered after being underwater for 117 days. It was driven on the ice and crashed through on Jan. 22. The driver and his dog were uninjured.
Reminder Publishing photo by Cliff Clark
SOUTHWICK — For 117 days, a 2011 Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck that was driven on the ice of the Middle Pond in late January, crashed through and submerged in over 25 feet of water, was recovered on May 18 by members of the Western Massachusetts Regional Dive Team.
“It was a coordinated effort,” said Richard Grannells, the chair of the town’s Lake Management Committee, who stood with over 100 people for over four and half hours watching as the members of the dive team worked to recover the truck.
Grannells was surprised at where the truck was found. A security camera recorded the truck, whose driver’s name has not been made public and who not present on May 18, according to acquaintances, as it crashed through the ice. It was found about 200 yards from where it was thought to be submerged.
He said it must have floated to where it was found in the minutes after it went through the ice. It stopped with all four wheels on the bottom of the pond, right side up, he said.
After divers determined the location, they went under and attached two flotation bags to the truck.
Those who were watching thought that the truck would surface, but it didn’t.
Even one of the members of the regional dive team said they were expecting the truck to surface, but it was raised a few feet from the bottom and floated to the Middle Pond Boat Ramp launch, where it was driven in on Jan. 22.
Waiting at the launch was Interstate Towing’s 60-ton recovery truck.
As the truck got closer to the dock, a diver attached a thickly braided steel cable to the truck’s hitch and slowly pulled it out.
Just as the blue truck’s cabin broke through the surface over five nip bottles popped to the surface and floated away.
The truck was intact, but its windows had been broken out by the divers to attach the flotation bags.
The cost of the recovery effort was covered by the driver’s insurance, said Police Chief Rhett Bannish.
The driver went to the police station on Jan. 24 to report the incident.
Bannish said at the time the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Massachusetts Environmental Police were notified and that the MEP would conduct the investigation into the incident.
The driver was fined $50 by the Conservation Commission for violating a town ordinance that prohibits the operation of vehicles on the ice of the three Great Ponds of Congamond Lakes.
Owners are also legally responsible for the removal of submerged vehicles and can face thousands of dollars in penalties if fluids contaminate the water or if the incident is deemed negligent.
According to state law, a person who negligently commits an environmental violation and thereby causes serious bodily injury to another human being or a substantial risk of damage to natural resources or to the property of another person in an amount exceeding $25,000, shall be punished by a fine of not less than $2,500, not more than $50,000 per day of violation, or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or by both such fine and imprisonment.
When a vehicle sinks and remains underwater for weeks or months, which could be the case here, there are specific environmental hazards created, including leaking engine fluids like gasoline, transmission fluid, antifreeze — which is highly toxic — hydraulic fluids and acids, like sulfuric acid, from batteries.
