RAINIER, Ore. — Two people died on Friday in a crash that shut down Highway 30 west of Rainier — a crash that the staff of a nearby veterinary clinic blamed on the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT)'s failure to add a turn lane.
Oregon State Police said a vehicle traveling west attempted to turn left off the highway into Valley Veterinary Clinic at 8:08 a.m. when it was rear-ended by a second vehicle and pushed into oncoming traffic, where it was hit head-on by a third vehicle headed east.
Two people in the vehicle that was rear-ended and hit head-on were pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators have identified them as Bridget Ann Connell, 54, and 47-year-old Nyx Ariel Connell, both from Scappoose.
The drivers and two passengers, including a 6-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl, in the other vehicle involved were taken to the hospital with what are said to be minor injuries.
OSP says the cause of the crash is under investigation.
Columbia River Fire & Rescue reported just after 8:30 a.m. that Highway 30 was closed in both directions "due to a major motor vehicle accident."
The crash happened just outside of Valley Veterinary Clinic located on the south side of the highway between Rainier and the town of Alston. According to a letter shared with KGW and addressed to staff at the Oregon Department of Transportation, the clinic has been trying to get ODOT to fix traffic issues there "for years."
"When you look up the section of road, you may recognize it as one brought to ODOT's attention repeatedly," clinic staff wrote in the letter.
According to the clinic, a couple who were their clients died, along with their puppy, after being hit at "highway speeds." Because of their close proximity, staff from the veterinary clinic said they were first on the scene — finding both the people who survived the crash and those who did not.
According to Kelley D'Agrosa Jewell, a member of the clinic's staff, a colleague who is a military veteran tried to help. When they first arrived at the scene, the deceased couple's dog was still alive, she said. Though the clinic tried to save it, it did not survive.
"I'm furious, I'm disgusted, my staff is traumatized — they shouldn't have to deal with that," D'Agrosa Jewell told KGW. "They're out in a war zone because you couldn't put up a flashing light; you couldn't let us put up signs, which we offered to do multiple times."
Clinic staff said in the letter that they'd been asking ODOT for a turn lane on this section of the highway after "numerous crashes," including some that injured staff.
"Over and over and over we have reported crashes in front of our business," the letter reads, in part. "We instruct clients to go around, we tell staff not to turn left across the highway. We see the results. Maybe no crash has been terrible enough to get your attention. Maybe our warnings and our begging and our pleading just wasn't loud enough for the folks at ODOT."
On July 30, ODOT replied in an email that based on a preliminary report from the Oregon State Police, the crash was "a rear-end collision with a car waiting to turn left." The agency said that it received an email from the clinic shortly after Friday's fatal crash.
ODOT added that it received a petition about adding a left-turn lane in front of the clinic in 2019, but "we don’t build them for a single business." ODOT cited two crashes that happened at the clinic's location between 1995 and 2022; a head-on crash with moderate injury occurred in 2018, and in 2020, a car hit a "fixed object," causing property damage." Neither was a result of a vehicle waiting to turn left into the clinic, and an ODOT crew had widened the shoulders in front of the clinic in 2011.
ODOT concluded, "Based on the data, we don’t think engineering is the solution to this location. As a straight, flat stretch of highway with good visibility, and with only a single driveway access, it does not meet the criteria for building a left-turn lane/median. We don’t build highway infrastructure for a single business on state highways."
Highway 30 was closed for about six hours on Friday.