Glenn Sorko says he was not an eyewitness to the mudslide that swept away his friend Valerie Morris on Highway 99 North on Aug. 11.
“I was a survivor because I was in this too,” he told the News in an in-depth interview. Sorko was able to rescue Morris’ husband Tom from the slide near Hat Creek Corner, but was unable to find her after a wall of mud, water and debris plunged down the hillside, taking Valerie Morris and the couple’s Morgan sports car with it.
Because of the sudden onset of a fierce afternoon thunderstorm, the Morrises had stopped by the side of the highway to put up the top on their convertible when the slide struck. They had been the lead car in a group of six Morris cars traveling from Lillooet to Kamloops. When they stopped, Zorko drove ahead of them and parked his Morris.
Sorko is a former West Coast bush pilot, flew out of Inuvik in the Arctic and was a pilot for Air Canada for 34 years, recording more than 22,000 hours in the air.
“I’ve flown in typhoons and hurricanes and I know weather very well,” said Sorko. “It was a torrential downpour and hail the size of a man’s thumbnail was coming down. We were not driving at any speed because visibility was extremely poor. We carried on to a point where Tom wanted to put his top up. Tom pulled over and I pulled up beside him and told him I wanted to go a little further because I wanted more room for where I was going to park. I figure I went ahead 150 or 200 feet and parked before walking back to him.”
Tom Morris succeeded in putting the top on his convertible and Sorko headed back to his car. That was when the slide hit. Sorko doesn’t specifically remember hearing it come down but says something made him turn around at that moment, only to see Tom and Valerie’s car disappear.
He estimates he then spent 15 to 20 minutes “standing there, hanging onto my car” while using a large stick to deflect debris away from his vehicle.
Sorko compares the mudslide to a “dam giving way high above,” sending rocks, water, branches, trees and a pole that resembled a telephone pole down the hillside above Highway 99 North.
After the torrent subsided, Sorko spotted Tom Morris. He climbed over a barbed wire fence and clambered down the hillside but was unable to reach Morris. He signaled to Morris, who was unable to hear him, to sit down.
“He was in a safe place, so at that time I indicated to him I was going to go down the river to try to find Val. I have done some whitewater kayaking and I looked at the flow and I thought, ‘Nobody’s going to survive that.’ It was like a small canyon down below there and the water was just streaming through,” Sorko recalls. “I went as far as I could and I had to say, ‘There’s no way I’m going to find her.’ So I went back to get Tom back up onto the road.”
Tom Morris used a nearby log to pull himself closer to the road and as a crowd of people gathered above, they found a rope, looped it at the end and tossed it to him. He wrapped the rope around his arm and he was pulled up to the highway.
“He was in bad shape,” said Sorko. “He was red and black and blue from head to toe.” He was also suffering from hypothermia from being in the water.
Three Good Samaritans – a young woman from Amsterdam who had medical training and a young French-Canadian couple with a van - came to the rescue. Sorko doesn’t know their names but he has high praise for them. To fend off the hypothermia, the girl from Holland wrapped herself around one side of Morris while the French-Canadian woman wrapped herself around his other side as her partner worked on Morris’ feet and legs.
“We kept talking to Tom; we were almost yelling at him when he started to close his eyes and wanted to go to sleep,” remembers Sorko. “That was the big thing – to keep him awake.”
The young French-Canadian couple took Tom Morris to Lillooet District Hospital in their van. Sorko remained behind to use a stick to dig out his car. He also used the cup from the top of his thermos to bail out the mud from the driver’s side of the interior of his car.
There was another slide ahead of him so he opted to try to return to Lillooet. The car started instantly, but he still had to find a way back over the slide
By then, the only people left at the scene were emergency responders. Protocols dictated that legally they could not assist him because he was disobeying rules by trying to clear a path to Lillooet. By then, the slide consisted mostly of water, but he still had to remove rocks and debris.
“I cleared a path and drove back to Lillooet. I did not get back there until 9:15 that night. I figured I’d been at the slide since 4.” Sorko told the News.
He says everyone in the Morgan car club is a “different breed of person. You have to be to love a car like that.”
Speaking of the kindness of Tom and Val Morris, he said they offered him a place to stay the night before the group set out from West Vancouver to Kamloops via Whistler and Lillooet.
“They are very nice, caring people. The members of the club are like family.”
Reviewing his own conduct at scene of the slide and his career as a pilot, Sorko said, “I did what I had to do. To be a good captain, somebody has to take control and get the job done.”
