BYRON – Heavy tow-truck operators and two Rumford logging crews spent more than eight hours on Friday removing logs and a mangled pulpwood tractor-trailer from the ravine into which it crashed on Thursday near Coos Canyon in Byron.

Like Thursday’s 4-hour rescue of logging truck driver James Peterson, 59, of Hancock Street in Rumford, Friday’s work was equally difficult, Dave Hodgson, owner of M/T Pockets Towing of Dixfield, said on scene.

“If it wasn’t for the stumps and everything else in the way, it would be easy, but that bank just drops right off and the road is narrow and doesn’t give us much room to work,” Hodgson said.

He was trying to lift the tractor cab up to Dingle Hill Road while working in tandem with Carrier Logging skidder operator Dana Carrier. Hodgson’s tri-axle big-rig tow truck had four steel ropes connected to the tractor cab frame, while Carrier used a steel cable to winch the cab up.

“I’ve had (tractor-trailer extrications) down in ravines before, but not like this. Not with one that’s full of rocks, stumps, 6 feet of snow, and sitting in a brook. There are so many rocks down there. That’s what did most of the damage. They pulled wheels right off the truck and flattened all of the other tires on one side,” Hodgson said.

Earlier that morning, a Maine Department of Environmental Protection crew pumped the fuel out of crumpled tanks on the mangled logging truck to protect the brook, Byron fire Deputy Chief Robert Susbury Jr. said on scene. He and other Byron firefighters had placed absorbent pads in and around the brook to soak up a minor amount of spilled fluids.

Red Oak Forestry logger Sherwood Pingree said on scene that it took them about two hours to offload the 80,000 pounds of spruce and fir pulp from the 48-foot-long trailer onto another pulp truck.

Then, using two skidders and help from Carrier Logging crews who had been logging with Red Oak crews 10 miles east of the accident, they lifted the trailer up to the road by 3 p.m.

The 18- to 20-foot-long tractor cab was lifted onto the road by 4 p.m.

“There ain’t a straight piece on this truck. Nothing,” Pingree said staring with others at the damage. “That dent in the roof is where the tree hit the cab. Unreal.”

Pingree said he spoke with Peterson on Friday morning at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, where Peterson was airlifted to on Thursday after being extricated.

“He’s doing alright. He’s got quite a gash on his forehead and said he’s sore. I’m surprised he’s still living – I really am. He’s lucky to be living, to say nothing about being sore,” Pingree added.

A CMMC nursing supervisor contacted early Friday evening said Peterson was no longer a patient there.