Driver rescued from floodwaters in vicinity of Forestville spot where woman died in 2023

A woman had to be rescued Wednesday night from her SUV after she drove onto Mark West Station Road between Trenton-Healdsburg and Starr roads, outside of Forestville.

Fire officials said she called 911 after floodwaters from nearby Windsor Creek trapped her in her vehicle.

This is about a mile away from the area where, a year ago, a 43-year-old Ukiah woman died after flooding near Trenton-Healdsburg Road trapped her in her car.

Daphne Fontino had also called 911 from her vehicle, but her line was disconnected and boat and helicopter crews were unable to find her.

Fontino's body was later found inside her vehicle, about 200 yards from Mark West Creek, near Forestville.

When rescue crews responded shortly after 9 p.m. on Wednesday, the woman’s Honda CRV was stopped in water that was 2 to 3 feet deep with a “pretty significant current flowing across the roadway,” said Sonoma County Fire District Special Operations Battalion Chief Mike Stornetta.

The Honda was about 800 feet from Starr Road and 400 feet from Trenton-Healdsburg Road when the vehicle stalled, water flowed into the vehicle and the driver was unable to open the door, said fire district spokesperson Karen Hancock.

A two-lane, rural stretch of road bordered by vineyards, Mark West Station is also lined by fencing. Had the woman gotten out of her SUV on her own Wednesday night, she risked being swept into the roadside fence by the current, Stornetta said.

The rescue, called a shallow-water crossing, involved six, swift-water trained rescuers who held onto the backs of each others’ life jackets in a diamond formation. They then made their way to the woman’s vehicle.

There, they opened one of the doors of the Honda as it stood in the water, took the woman into the center of the diamond and walked her to dry land.

By the time rescuers reached the vehicle, the water was as high as the woman’s lap. She remained on the phone with emergency dispatchers through the rescue, Stornetta said.

He added that the conditions of the rescue posed a “very significant risk to our guys and to the victim.”

“While the general public looks at that road and they say, ‘Well, there's only 2 feet, 3 feet of water, they don't realize the hydraulics behind that current and how powerful that water is,” Stornetta said.

A signs posted asking drivers to avoid the road had been moved before the driver advanced into the roadway, which is often one of the first to flood in the area, Hancock said.

“It doesn’t take much to start flowing over the road there,” she said.

“Please, please do not go around those barricades,” she added, addressing other drivers planning to pass through the area.

Firefighters drove the woman in a fire engine to where someone could pick her up.

Neither the woman nor any of her rescuers were injured, Stornetta added.

Hancock said Fontino’s death last year was very much on hers and others’ minds as they responded to the call Wednesday night.

Staff reporter Madison Smalstig contributed to this story.