Five years ago, Tara Chestnut was working as the Mount Rainier National Park wildlife program manager, collaborating with the nonprofit Cascade Carnivores Project to monitor the Cascade red fox population around the stratovolcano.
Little did Chestnut know what she thought was going to be a routine hike to a known den location would end with her nearly being killed after getting crushed by a boulder.
On Tuesday, June 23, Chestnut visited the first responders from Pierce County Fire District 23 in Ashford to thank and honor them for their lifesaving efforts. She marked the fifth anniversary of her rescue by giving them a U.S. flag flown over the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
Chestnut shared her story with The Chronicle on Thursday, June 25.
Back in 2021, Chestnut and a Cascade Carnivores Project member were visiting known previous fox den locations to see if they were still in use in efforts to monitor the population of the endangered species in Washington state.
“The fox that we were specifically looking for was one that was really famous around the Paradise area. Her name was Whitefoot, because her left-rear foot was white,” Chestnut said. “We’re really creative about how we name things.”
Whitefoot’s den site was one that they had been to many times before, and even now, still seems safe to Chestnut.
“But you know, the laws of probability worked out, well, not in my favor that day,” she said.
As she was attempting to look down into a cluster of rocks, she was steadying herself by gripping onto a boulder she thought felt stable. But when she shifted her weight, the stability disappeared.
“Long story short, I was crushed by a piece of andesite that weighed between seven- and eight-thousand pounds,” Chestnut said. “The only reason I am alive is because it was in close proximity to a road, so emergency services had quick access to me, and because Mount Rainier National Park has dedicated EMS staff.”
The ensuing fall left her right arm pinned underneath the boulder itself. But within two hours of the incident, she was already aboard an Airlift Northwest helicopter on her way to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Chestnut needed to go to Harborview Medical Center because it is currently the only level one trauma center, not only for Washington state, but several other surrounding states as well.
She was thankful for the quick response, as the incident broke 15% of the bones in her body, including “none of the easy ones,” such as several vertebrae and her pelvis.
“If I had been in the backcountry, there’s no question in my mind that I would’ve been dead,” she added.
She also specifically thanked the first two responders to arrive at the scene in 2021, as they were actually not EMS providers, but National Park Service (NPS) maintenance staff.
“They heard the traffic on the radio, and just given the severity, they had the situational awareness to know that this was a situation where traffic control was going to be needed. They stopped the work that they were doing so they could provide aid in whatever way EMS needed,” Chestnut said.
Though the location of the incident was near a road, first responders still had to use ropes to lift Chestnut up to the ambulance.
She was even more appreciative to her rescuers since the incident occurred during the peak of that summer’s heat dome, and to the medical staff at Harborview for taking care of her amid COVID-19 staffing shortages.
Chestnut also thanked U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier and her staffer, Kevin Mendez, for proposing the idea of gifting the Capitol flag to Pierce County Fire District 23 as a thank you for rescuing her.
“That just seemed like a really meaningful way to acknowledge the role that local fire departments have,” Chestnut said.
Chestnut had been in contact with Schrier’s office as her medical care was being covered by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Federal Worker’s Compensation program, but she still personally received a $30,000 bill for the helicopter flight to Harborview.
Though she was thankful for her rescue, Chestnut still worries about the future of both many small local fire departments like Pierce County Fire District 23, and many NPS programs and facilities.
“Even before the current funding cuts, and even before the impacts of DOGE to the Parks Service, they were under-resourced then,” Chestnut said.
Like many small first responder agencies around the nation facing budget crunches due to inflation and other factors, NPS staff are being forced to work more with continually dwindling resources and funding. Especially since many smaller EMS providers like Pierce County Fire District 23 work closely to coordinate rescue efforts with NPS staff.
“You just can’t keep on piling work on people like that, and expecting all of that work to get done and for people to show up at their best. I hope that things change for the better, because our parks are, Ken Burns said it best, ‘it was America’s greatest idea,’ and if we can’t support them, I just worry that people aren’t going to work for the parks anymore,” said Chestnut. “And we’re not going to have dedicated EMS that can help staff and visitors at the park. We need to pay people.”
Along with her own NPS work at Mount Rainier, Chestnut has also worked as an ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. She earned her doctorate in wildlife diseases from Oregon State University in 2015, and is also now the board president of the Cascade Carnivore Project.
To learn more, visit the nonprofit’s website at https://www.cascadescarnivore.org/.
