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‘It wasn’t my time to go’ Angus driver describes incredible escape from submerged car

Krystyna back at the scene of her ordeal. Inset: her car almost completely submerged after last week's accident.
Krystyna back at the scene of her ordeal. Inset: her car almost completely submerged after last week's accident.

A young Angus woman has re-lived her death-defying escape from an upturned car in the raging waters of a flooded Angus burn.

Three days after the terrifying morning crash which saw Krystyna Allison’s Vauxhall Astra leave the road near Craichie on the Forfar-Carnoustie road and plunge into the fast flowing Vinney Water, the 25-year-old returned to the scene and told The Courier she was determined that Friday was “not my time to go”.

The dramatic image of Krystyna’s upturned silver car left passers-byastonished that anyone had escaped with their life but the Ark Housing employee revealed the steely resolve which saw her swim to safety through the rear passenger window of the submerged car.

Krystyna, from Forfar, said she had set off early for work in Carnoustie on Friday morning after friends phoned to warn her about the treacherous road conditions as torrential rain swept across Angus.

On a bend near Craichie Mill, she felt the rear of her car slide out and then remembers seeing the telegraph pole which the car smashed through before the Astra rolled into the water.

“I landed on my roof and everything just went dark. I could see the muddy water at the windows and then it started coming through the air vents like waterfalls.”

Krystyna, who previously worked inForfar’s Boyz Zone barbers, unbuckledherself and began the desperate bid to escape the car.

“I didn’t know where I was. I wasstruggling to open the window and then I took a breath and got out the passenger window.

“I was standing in the river trying to clamber out and that’s when it really hit home,” she added.

A passer-by took soaked Krystyna to Whitehills health and community carecentre in Forfar, where miraculously she was found to have suffered only severe bruising and nettle stings from clambering up the bank of the burn.

“My pals were amazed I was able to get out. I don’t know how I did it and I must have been in the car for a few minutes but I just took a breath and went for it.”One way to catch a troutHaving escaped with her life in the terrifying crash, Krystyna feared she had, however, lost her mobile phone.

Containing treasured family photographs, it was lost in the murky floodwaters during the dramatic events of Friday morning.

But, back at the scene on Monday and with the Vinney Burn running clear after last week’s storm waters subsided, the 25-year-old was reunited with the phone when Courier photographer Kim Cessford spotted it among the weeds of the burn.

“I had been back at the scene I was determined to drive the road again straight away and went there later that day but there was no way I thought I would get my phone back,” she said.

Krystyna now hopes she will be able to retrieve the priceless memories from the phone’s sim card.

She was less keen to pick up another memento of the accident an 8in brown trout found in the footwell of the written-off vehicle.

“I think that freaked me out even more than the accident,” she said.