1987 Orma Lake Road Stranding Fuel Disaster (mine)
We drove this route (coming in from the west) in 1987 in my 1972 VW Bus. The road was so rumblly that by the time we got up from Quebec City to Labrador City (in 1 day) the bolts holding my engine assembly together came apart and then the accelerator was stuck on the full on setting and I could control the vehicle only by breaking or turning the key off. In Labrador City, the Police pulled us over to say that we were the 3rd vehicle to drive overland to Labrador City as the road had just been finished. The road east from there was not finished so they casually told me to drive my van up onto the top of the train double decker vehicle car, which I did. We got off the train in Esker and did some fishing. After leaving Churchill Falls, there was no sign, so we drove up Orma Road by mistake going directly north. There was a badwashout in the road that took us a day to get through, and that spot we saw and photographed the same black bear you did. Then, we continued on the bumpy ride, during which we drove with a lot of fat geese that could barely fly down the road and didn't want to leave it. When we got to the end of the road we thought something was odd because the trees were getting very short, so we wondered if we were going the wrong way instead of to Goose Bay. So, we kept driving until we just couldn't go any further. This was very, very, far. Nobody was on that road because of the bad washout we had got through, so we were all alone. We checked our compass and saw we had been driving and realized our mistake. We had not yet read the books about peope canoing through here and dying because of the remoteness. We then noticed that we were almost out of gas.... not enough gas to return south. We didn't know what to do. After a while we found a barrell on the side of the road and it selled like some kind of fuel, so we poured it into the gas tank. After that, the car would not run at all, and we realized we must have poured diesel fuel into the tank. After that, I found some two stroke motor oil/gas mixture we can for the canoe motor, and also poured this into the tank. With that, the car would run, but only if I kept it over 4,500rpm redline. So, we redlined it back to Churchill Falls and made up a story that my wife had got the gas and did not know the difference between diesel fuel or gasoline, and could they change our oil and gas. They were nice enough to do this for us for free, with a lot of joking about the wife's abilities. We were told to make up that story because the locals told us the hydro company dealt severely with anyone "stealing" fuel out of their barrels found in the wilderness. We found out later that you should never mix gasoline and diesel fuel together because the mixture is highly explosive. We drive to Goose Bay and took the ferry south, eventually driving the VW bus to New York City where we both had jobs as journalists and lived, and where we parked the van on the street. Two years later we heard about the 4x4 version of these vans, and I've been driving the 4x4 version ever since (see www.syncromadness.com).
We drove this route (coming in from the west) in 1987 in my 1972 VW Bus. The road was so rumblly that by the time we got up from Quebec City to Labrador City (in 1 day) the bolts holding my engine assembly together came apart and then the accelerator was stuck on the full on setting and I could control the vehicle only by breaking or turning the key off. In Labrador City, the Police pulled us over to say that we were the 3rd vehicle to drive overland to Labrador City as the road had just been finished. The road east from there was not finished so they casually told me to drive my van up onto the top of the train double decker vehicle car, which I did. We got off the train in Esker and did some fishing. After leaving Churchill Falls, there was no sign, so we drove up Orma Road by mistake going directly north. There was a badwashout in the road that took us a day to get through, and that spot we saw and photographed the same black bear you did. Then, we continued on the bumpy ride, during which we drove with a lot of fat geese that could barely fly down the road and didn't want to leave it. When we got to the end of the road we thought something was odd because the trees were getting very short, so we wondered if we were going the wrong way instead of to Goose Bay. So, we kept driving until we just couldn't go any further. This was very, very, far. Nobody was on that road because of the bad washout we had got through, so we were all alone. We checked our compass and saw we had been driving and realized our mistake. We had not yet read the books about peope canoing through here and dying because of the remoteness. We then noticed that we were almost out of gas.... not enough gas to return south. We didn't know what to do. After a while we found a barrell on the side of the road and it selled like some kind of fuel, so we poured it into the gas tank. After that, the car would not run at all, and we realized we must have poured diesel fuel into the tank. After that, I found some two stroke motor oil/gas mixture we can for the canoe motor, and also poured this into the tank. With that, the car would run, but only if I kept it over 4,500rpm redline. So, we redlined it back to Churchill Falls and made up a story that my wife had got the gas and did not know the difference between diesel fuel or gasoline, and could they change our oil and gas. They were nice enough to do this for us for free, with a lot of joking about the wife's abilities. We were told to make up that story because the locals told us the hydro company dealt severely with anyone "stealing" fuel out of their barrels found in the wilderness. We found out later that you should never mix gasoline and diesel fuel together because the mixture is highly explosive. We drive to Goose Bay and took the ferry south, eventually driving the VW bus to New York City where we both had jobs as journalists and lived, and where we parked the van on the street. Two years later we heard about the 4x4 version of these vans, and I've been driving the 4x4 version ever since (see www.syncromadness.com).
