BATH — Roy Ordway’s routine trip to the gas station and the hardware on Monday store took a surreal turn as he was driving on Vine Street and heard what sounded like ice falling from the Route 1 viaduct above him.

What he heard wasn’t ice, but pieces of an aluminum guardrail that were quickly followed by an SUV that plummeted 30 feet off the elevated roadway and landed – upside down – in the back of Ordway’s Ford F-150 pickup.

Roy Ordway's pickup is hooked to a tow truck after the crash. He didn't mind the damage – he was planning to buy a van. A Mercury Mountaineer rests on its roof after being removed from the truck bed. The occupants, Melissa Medina of Windham and her 12-year-old son, survived the accident.

“I guess I saw something coming from above,” Ordway said. “I laid down (across) the seat. I guess I knew it was gonna hit.”

The cab of Ordway’s truck was largely untouched, and he was shaken but unharmed.

“The only thing that I remember, honestly, is getting out of my truck and looking back and seeing a car in the back of it,” the longtime maintenance man recalled Tuesday. “And I guess I reached in and turned the key off because I figured I wasn’t going anywhere.”

Incredibly, the occupants of the Mercury Mountaineer, Melissa Medina of Windham and her 12-year-old son, survived the crash.

Medina was in fair condition Tuesday at Maine Medical Center, hospital officials said. They declined to provide her son’s condition, but in a brief phone interview Tuesday afternoon, Jason Medina, Melissa’s husband, said his wife and son are doing OK. His wife was expected to have her jaw wired shut during surgery Tuesday night, he said.

“They’re both doing well,” he said. “They have a long road ahead of them.”

Road conditions on the viaduct were slick and icy at the time of the accident because of the snow, said Bath Police Lt. Robert Savary. Medina, who was heading south, was likely traveling at or close to the speed limit, which is 35 mph.

“I don’t think excessive speed is going to be a factor, more than the road conditions,” Savary said. Alcohol doesn’t appear to be a factor in the crash, police said.

Ordway doesn’t remember many details, but said fire crews and police arrived quickly and got to work separating the two vehicles and extracting Medina and her son.

“I don’t know if I had my foot on the brake or on the gas,” he said of what happened when he heard the noises above him as he drove on Vine Street. “It’s kind of strange, to be honest.”

Ordway is pleased that no one was killed, and suggested that his truck’s suspension, which is designed to take a heavy load, may have cushioned the vehicle’s fall.

“I’m glad it worked out the way it did,” he said. “Falling that far off, then hitting the pavement, it could have been worse.”

The entire ordeal was still settling in, Ordway said.

“I didn’t sleep so well last night, honestly, and I realize how lucky I am,” he said. “Just a few seconds either way, if I’d been a few seconds slower or a few seconds faster, the outcome could have been quite different for either vehicle.”

The truck is likely a total loss. Although the cab was nearly untouched, the rear half, including the bed, was flattened by the impact.

Ordway isn’t concerned about his vehicle – he wasn’t attached to it and was planning to buy a van.

Fire crews had to use heavy equipment to cut Medina and her son from the SUV, which was totaled. It was moved to a wrecking yard, blood still staining the vehicle’s roof.

On Tuesday, yellow safety barrels blocked off the section of guardrail that was damaged in the crash along a narrow, elevated section of road where there is virtually no shoulder or run-off area.

The Maine Department of Transportation has repaired the guardrail on the viaduct before, but a car has never crashed through it and fallen off the bridge, Chief Engineer Joyce Taylor told WCSH-TV on Tuesday.

“This is a first for me, to have a car actually go through a bridge railing and actually come off the bridge,” Taylor said. “It’s pretty rare.”

She said the department inspected the scene Monday night and found the posts were bolted down, but the car’s impact had sheared them off.

MDOT had inspected the bridge in January and found no major issues, she said.

“Something different happened here. I don’t know what that is yet, but I don’t think this railing could withstand that angle and level of force that happened,” Taylor said.

The quarter-mile bridge opened in 1958, and is scheduled to be replaced this year in a $15 million project that will go into full swing in October. More than 18,000 vehicles travel the road each day.

Coastal Journal Staff Writer Chris Chase contributed to this report.

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