Air bubble saves 86-year-old trapped in creek
An 86-year-old woman survived nearly 48 hours in her submerged car after it crashed into a creek while she was driving home from an airport.
The car landed upside down in the creek and Wanda McKinnis manoeuvred until her head was in what she called ‘‘a bubble’’ of air.
‘‘I was just sitting there in a weed patch with bugs all about me,’’ said Mrs McKinnis. ‘‘I was thorough about getting the bugs away from me. I’m not a person that likes bugs.’’
Mrs McKinnis, who lives in Achille, Oklahoma, drove about 90 miles south to Dallas, Texas, to pick up her husband at the airport.
After failing to find him, she headed home.
At about 11:30 pm, she got lost near Marietta, Oklahoma, and drove her 1987 Pontiac Firebird off the road into the creek.
‘‘She’s unbelievable,’’ said Melinda Persons, a nurse at Love County Mercy Hospital. ‘‘She has no injuries, she’s just kind of beat up and she had a hair full of mud.’’
Mrs McKinnis said that at one point she began bargaining with the only one who might have been watching.
‘‘I’m not a churchgoer,’’ she said, ‘‘but I promised Him I might start to go to church.’’
Mrs McKinnis drifted in and out of consciousness during her ordeal, sometimes hallucinating.
‘‘I thought there was little men down there. I seen people out there and they weren’t out there,’’ she said.
Help finally arrived when passers-by saw the car and notified police.
Meanwhile her husband, whose plane did arrive, took a taxi home and notified police when he was unable to find his wife.
