Truck pulled from Swan River

A man apparently spent nearly 30 minutes in the water after he drove his truck into the Swan River in Bigfork Sunday night.

The driver was an Oregon man but law-enforcement officials have declined to identify him because the investigation is ongoing. Authorities believe alcohol was a factor in the incident.

Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said the driver simply missed the entrance to the one-lane span on Bridge Street heading toward downtown Bigfork. From there it was a steep drop into the water below.

“[The truck] wound up going down the bank and wound up going into the water, which is fairly swift in there,” Curry said.

The river current swept the truck into Bigfork Bay before it stopped. The cold water was close to the top of the truck doors by the time first responders arrived. 

The call came in at 9:15 p.m. The Bigfork Fire Department and the Montana Highway Patrol responded to the scene along with the Sheriff’s Office.

The driver stayed in the truck until a deputy pulled him out. One of the responding deputies, a member of the Sheriff’s Office Dive Rescue Team, swam to the truck with a tether connecting him to shore.

The deputy pulled the driver out the passenger window and made it back to land, where medical personnel were standing by. Curry said the man was getting hypothermic by the time he was pulled out of the water.

“He was cold,” Curry said. “I mean not significantly injured in the crash, but he went down a steep embankment.”

A Bigfork ambulance transported the man to Kalispell Regional Medical Center. He remained conscious the entire time.

Mick Borges, assistant chief for the Bigfork Fire Department, said it took hours to pull the truck out of the bay. It was close enough to the mouth of the river that the current continued to push into the truck while crews worked to extract it. 

Using tow trucks and a Sheriff’s Office boat, they got the truck back on dry land after 3 a.m., nearly six hours after the first call.

Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Eric Thoreson was able to get some questions in with the driver before he left in the ambulance. The trooper conducted another interview at the hospital.

“He said something hit his windshield and that distracted him,” Thoreson said. “The next thing he knew, he was in the river.”

Charges could be pending for the driver. Thoreson said he will examine the truck to see if there is evidence to support the man’s story.

While it took hours to get the truck out of the water, getting the driver out quickly was the first priority for responders, according to Borges.

“It was all about safety,” he said.