Trooper Puts Crash Injuries in Rearview

Jan. 30, 2015
Ohio Highway Patrol Trooper Andrew Clouser is eager to go back out on patrol.

MILAN, Ohio — Ohio Highway Patrol Trooper Andrew Clouser was checking on occupants of a vehicle involved in one of a series of crashes on the Ohio Turnpike near Castalia during a blinding snowstorm last winter when his world suddenly went black.

When Trooper Clouser came to — he thinks it was just 10 or 20 seconds later — he was trapped under his cruiser and the van was stopped next to it. He couldn’t feel his right leg, and breathing was painful.

“‘I’ve got to get out of here,’” he recalled thinking. “I don’t remember being struck, but I was in a tremendous amount of pain.”

Besides worrying about what might happen to him if more traffic slammed into the growing pileup, the trooper knew he needed to get to where an ambulance could reach him.

People in other vehicles, stranded by the chain-reaction crash between Turnpike mileposts 101 and 102 that ended up involving 55 vehicles and killing three travelers, came to his rescue. They teamed up to push Trooper Clouser’s wrecked cruiser off him and out of the way, dragged him out of potential harm’s way, and gave him blankets to keep warm until more help arrived.

“I don’t know who they were, and it wasn’t just for me. They were helping everybody they could,” he said in an interview this week. “They were just doing their part, being good citizens.”

Now, after more than 10 months of recovery and rehabilitation, Trooper Clouser is eager to go back out on patrol from the Milan post, where he has been assigned since becoming an Ohio state trooper in 2013. Right now, he estimates his return is Feb. 23, but his bottom-line goal is March 12, the massive crash’s anniversary.

“I want to work on March 12th,” he said. “From a mental standpoint, it’ll help me get past this whole mess.”

A native of Cheboygan, Mich., the trooper hired on with the Ohio Highway Patrol after finishing undergraduate studies at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Mich. He is still a member as well of the Army Reserve, with which he had deployed to Afghanistan before finishing college.

By the time Trooper Clouser arrived on the scene of the pileup, a single collision had been complicated when a tractor-trailer crashed into a car that had stopped for the first wreck. He stopped his cruiser on the roadside and began checking vehicles for injured when more vehicles slammed into the growing pileup and crashed into his cruiser. According to accident reports, a tractor-trailer then slammed into the pileup, killing its driver and injuring the trooper.

Young and fit

The breathing discomfort he felt upon regaining consciousness, he correctly diagnosed, was caused by five broken ribs. His right femur was broken in two places, he had two fractures in his lower back, his left lung was punctured, his spleen was ruptured, and he had liver and kidney damage. He needed four or five blood transfusions.

“‘Don’t worry, you’re young. You’re in good shape. You’ll be fine,’ ” he said doctors told him. “I didn’t feel fine.”

But being 29 and fit, Trooper Clouser now agrees, was a big plus. He was taken to Firelands Regional Medical Center in nearby Sandusky, then by ambulance to Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo, where he spent 12 days before returning to Firelands for 10 days of inpatient rehabilitation.

Surgeons placed a titanium rod in his broken leg to keep the femur in alignment while it healed, a pin he’ll have for the rest of his life. He endured months of physical therapy and slowly improved, though he doubted at times whether he’d have a satisfactory recovery.

Healing

“I knew I was going to live, but what was my quality of life going to be like?” he said. “Even after the surgery, I wondered, what if this never heals like it’s supposed to? But even with my doubts, I went with the program. I thought, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

He’s now focused on regaining his physical conditioning before he can resume patrol duty. Trooper Clouser has to run 1½ miles within 12 minutes, the highway patrol’s standard for trooper recruits. He’s also working toward the Army Reserve’s requirement to run two miles in 16½ minutes. Right now he can go that distance in 19 minutes.

The Ohio Highway Patrol’s investigation of the March 12 crashes concluded there were 50 distinct collisions, involving 126 vehicles, along the turnpike in eastern Sandusky and southwestern Erie counties during the whiteout conditions that afternoon.

Thirty-six people, including Trooper Clouser, were injured in the largest pileup, along with the deaths of Hannah Matheny, 20, of Parma, Ohio; Grzegorz Piwowarczyk, 42, of Palatine, Ill., and Janice Robb, 66, of Schererville, Ind.

Weather conditions

But except for a few failure-to-control tickets, no charges were filed related to any of the deaths or injuries. A Sandusky County grand jury declined to indict two truckers whom authorities said were most likely to blame for the pileup — the driver ticketed for the initial crash, and the one whose rig slammed into a wrecked car soon thereafter.

Trooper Clouser said as he approached the crash scene, he was driving at just 20 mph with his emergency lights on.

“That was the safest speed I could go,” he recalled. “There were people blowing by me.”

And that, the trooper said, is how pileups like those of March 12, and one earlier this month on I-94 in southwest Michigan that included a fireworks truck that caught fire, happen.

“They’re flying down this road and can’t see what’s in front of them until there’s a wall of cars,”Trooper Clouser said.

Contact David Patch at: [email protected] or 419-724-6094.

Copyright 2015 The Blade (Toledo, Ohio)

Tribune News Service

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