A couple was stranded for 12 hours after sliding off a snowy Oregon road, deputies said.
Washington County Sheriff’s Office (Oregon)
Michael and Lisa Silk thought they were too close to home to stay the night at a friend’s house after a snowy evening in Oregon, they told news outlets.
They ended up staying the night stranded on the side of a road instead.
The Vancouver couple had been visiting friends in Portland on Sunday, April 10. As they left to travel home, their friend told them they could stay the night in their extra room, Michael Silk told KPTV.
“How silly, we’re only a half hour from home,” he told the news outlet. “We’ll just go home.”
The couple got in their Prius to take the short drive home shortly before midnight. They were driving 20 miles an hour when they slid off the road and into a ditch, they told KGW.
They were stranded on the hillside and couldn’t get out.
“Even if we had moved the car [and] got the car out of the ditch, we couldn’t go anywhere,” Lisa Silk told the news outlet. “We heard the limbs cracking over our heads and falling and we had snowballs hitting the roof.”
The couple stayed in the car and kept it running until the morning, KGW reported. They weren’t prepared for that kind of weather now that spring had arrived.
“All of our winter stuff was already out of the car, because it was like April,” the couple told KGW. “We didn’t want to get stranded outside at 33 degrees, with no winter clothes.”
Portland Police asked the Washington County Sheriff’s Office to help assist the couple. Deputies discovered the couple’s car slid off the road and they had been stranded since the night before.
Officials couldn’t get to them right away because several roads were closed and trees were down, the sheriff’s office said. Getting to the couple “proved quite challenging,” deputies said.
Shortly before noon, however, deputies reached the couple. They weren’t injured during their overnight stay.
“Deputies began the challenging trek out of the area,” officials said on Twitter. “And with a bit of help from a local neighbor and their tractor, they were able to get out of the area and then gave the couple a ride home.”
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