GILEAD — A Gilead woman died of hypothermia Dec. 6 after falling into water along the gas pipeline off the North Road.

Marie Anderson, 52, had ridden out on the pipeline in a Jeep driven by a male acquaintance at about 11 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 5,  Oxford County Sheriff Lt. Hart Daley, said. He said the two were looking for animal tracks in the freshly fallen snow.

About a mile out, the Jeep became stuck in soft ground. The man, who Daley did not identify, started to walk back to the road for help. But he had not gotten far when Anderson got out of the vehicle herself and fell into waist-deep water, going completely under.

The man returned and pulled her out, soaking himself in the process, Daley said.

The two returned to the Jeep and put the heater on. The man put Anderson in the only dry clothing he had, a leather jacket, Daley said. They ran the vehicle’s heater for about two hours, hoping someone would miss them and come to help.

“But after a couple of hours he realized no one was coming,” Daley said.

Believing the Jeep would soon run out of gas, the man “asked her to make a run for it,” Daley said. “But it was still snowing, and windy. And you can’t get far when you’re soaked.

Daley said as they tried to walk, Anderson began falling down.

“He tried to carry her,” he said, and managed to get her within a half mile of the North Road. At that point, the man left her sitting in the snow and sprinted to a nearby house.

He and the resident made several phone calls, including one to Anderson’s boyfriend, Frank Corriveau of Gilead. One of the people they called then called an ambulance, Daley said.

Then the man ran back to Anderson.

Corriveau soon arrived on the scene, and together they carried Anderson to the road, Daley said. By then she was unconscious, he said.

Bethel Rescue arrived and at about 4 a.m. took Anderson to the Androscoggin Valley Hospital in Berlin, N.H., where she died. Her body temperature had dropped about 20 degrees, Daley said.

Anderson’s acquaintance, Daley said, “did everything in his power to keep her alive, jeopardizing his own life. He said his struggle to get her out kept him alive.”

Daley said the man’s account of his rescue effort was backed up by the evidence of the tracks he and Anderson made in the snow on the way back to the road.

© 2009 Bethel Citizen