Single Mom Caught In Green River Tunnel Says Hero Led Survivors From Fiery Crash

GREEN RIVER — A local single mom who was part of an explosive and deadly 26-vehicle crash Friday in the Green River Tunnel dragged her arm against the tunnel’s wall in the smoke-darkened chamber so that she could escape as explosions lobbed fiery projectiles and the tunnel darkened with smoke.

A local man she calls a hero told her to follow his voice out to safety, and she did. 

Now Andrea Domhoff, one of a handful of people who fled the westbound tunnel overlooking the town of Green River late Friday morning, credits the man, Ray Norton, with her survival — and the chance to hug her two sons once again. 

He came back for others as well, she said.

The crash started outside the tunnel but ended within it. It killed three people and left others injured. 

Firefighters fought the ensuing blaze as long as they could until it became too dangerous to enter the tunnel, where the fire raged and concrete rained down, Wyoming Department of Transportation Director Darin Westby told Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols during Monday’s “Morning Show With Jake.”

“When the concrete liner started spalling on the fire department while they were in there trying to battle the blaze and they had to pull (out), it wasn’t what they wanted to do,” said Westby. “They wanted to keep fighting the fire. But for their own safety they had to pull out.” 

Missed Exit

Before the crash, before the fire and before the tragedy, Domhoff missed the exit into her hometown of Green River, she told Cowboy State Daily during a Monday interview. 

She usually doesn’t drive through the tunnel, but on the way home from the eye doctor Friday, she glided into the westbound tunnel at about 50 mph in the posted 55 mph zone — knowing it has a tendency to be slick in the winter. 

She noticed a wreck ahead and hit her brakes. Another vehicle bumped into her twice. Then the driver of third vehicle, a truck, swerved to miss her and rammed into wrecked semitrucks instead, Domhoff said.

Domhoff called her boyfriend to let him know she’d been in an accident in the tunnel and didn’t know how long she’d be stuck there. Then she called her dad. She was crying, but told him she was fine.

The danger quickly escalated.

An explosion projectile — what she called a “fireball” — flung past her car and lit up the interior of the tunnel. What she saw was surreal — like something from the movies, Domhoff added.

Just then, her dad called again. 

“Dad, there was a fireball,” she told him. “Something exploded and I don’t know what, and it’s starting to get smoky.”

Her dad told her to get out of her car. She started gathering her wallet, keys and for some reason she doesn’t understand now, her sunglasses. She even locked her car, she realized much later when she went to collect it.

Find The Wall

Just as she was about to get out, a man whom Domhoff later identified as Norton pounded on her car window. 

“You’re not going to be able to see me, but listen for me,” yelled Norton at the time. 

Domhoff held her hoodie’s front across her nose and mouth. She cradled her phone between her ear and shoulder and kept her boyfriend on the line. And with her right arm, she rubbed against the tunnel’s side wall. 

“Find the wall,” Domhoff told herself. 

Domhoff later learned that Norton had gotten his wife and children to safety early, but then rushed back into the tunnel to call others out as the chamber darkened with smoke and its concrete liner weakened, she said. 

Norton could have sat in the light with his wife and kids, said Domhoff. But he didn’t. 

“I can’t even imagine what his family thought when he ran back in there for us,” she said, fighting back tears. “I’m eternally grateful. Because of him, I got to see my babies again.”

Norton hadn’t responded to Cowboy State Daily attempts to contact him by publication time.

Domhoff said she chose to speak publicly about the ordeal because she feels Norton deserves the recognition. 

"I got lucky for being in a community where people like that exist," she said of Norton.

She also said she hopes her story reaches other people who survived with her and weathered the traumatic aftermath together — with many hugs and tears — as they waited on scene. 

There was a “sweet, Spanish-speaking lady” who found Domhoff sitting on the guardrail, crying, soon after her harrowing escape. 

With a hug, the woman assured Domhoff that it was over. She wiped Domhoff’s ashy face with baby wipes, the latter recalled. 

A truck driver whose arm was bleeding also hugged Domhoff.

Domhoff suffered just a couple elbow scratches and smoke inhalation that has had her coughing out a smoke odor for the past three days. 

First responders on scene noticed Domhoff looked ill and made her get into an ambulance. She had her lungs checked at the hospital Friday and Monday, and they appear fine, she said.

NOTE: The above footage was taken two days after the crash when Andrea was allowed back in the tunnel.

Even To Work Two Jobs

The crash has changed Domhoff. 

She experiences flashbacks and waves of emotion. But she’s also deeply grateful to be alive. She’s grateful even for the chance to work her two jobs, she said. 

“I’ll do that every day of my life if I have to,” she said with a laugh. 

At the invitation of law enforcement, Domhoff and her boyfriend went back to the tunnel Saturday night to retrieve her car. 

She considered not going into the tunnel and just having her boyfriend walk in and retrieve the car, which required a jump start and was totaled from melted tar and fire damage, but was driveable. 

But Domhoff chose to walk into the tunnel, for closure. 

“For that I give credit to my mother,” she said. “She’s always taught me you just gotta be tough; toughen up and you’ll feel better for it.”

Domhoff’s dad asked her to take a video of the tunnel visit so he could see where her car landed in the crash. 

She did.

Though Domhoff later posted the videos of that visit publicly at her friends’ and family’s urging, her narration throughout them strikes the sincere tone of someone who — at that time — thought she was only talking to her dad. In the video she hyperventilates, she weeps, she angles her camera toward the wall that was her lifeline. 

Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.