Blown away

Published 9:00 pm Friday, June 1, 2001

Associated Press

FARMERSVILLE, Calif. — As she drove along the Wyoming interstate, Jeanette Meek’s only thoughts were about how great her family vacation was going.

Then she felt the shudder. A blowout.

Suddenly, she was spinning through the air, flipping over and over. Glass shattered. Metal crunched.

When the Meek family began its vacation last summer, traveling more than 1,000 miles from their home in California’s San Joaquin Valley, they had received no warning of a potential tire problem.

While camping, they were unaware of a recall of millions of Bridgestone/Firestone tires because of reported tread separations. The Meeks’ Explorer had those tires, and a Wyoming state patrol report would confirm that a left rear tire blowout caused the accident.

"In an instant, they were gone," Jeanette Meek said of the accident that killed her husband and granddaughter. "Then I find out these two major American companies knew about these problems and didn’t tell us."

Early last August, Ford and Firestone officials met to discuss the recall of Radial ATX tires — at the same time that Don Mason was examining the ATX tires on the Meeks’ Explorer, according to documents in the family’s lawsuit against the companies.

Garry Meek had driven his wife’s SUV to his old friend Mason’s tire shop in Farmersville.

As the former police chief and at the time a sheriff’s deputy, Meek had seen the dangers that faced drivers who didn’t take care of their vehicles.

"They looked good to me," Mason would later say of the tires.

Ford and Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. declined to comment on the Meeks’ case because of pending litigation.

On Aug. 16, eight days after the recall, the family left Big Piney, Wyo., after 10 days of camping for a caravan to Utah, the next leg of their trip.

A few miles down the road, it happened.

James and Roseanne yelled. Melissa, 10, in the back seat, felt something squeezing her chest.

All jumped out as soon as the Explorer came to rest.

James’ years as a volunteer firefighter took over. He knew he had to put aside his feelings as a father and son.

He saw Amy first, hanging halfway out the back passenger window. Her legs were crooked, her arms limp.

"Melissa, go get my knife," he told his younger daughter. He didn’t want her to see her sister so badly injured. He later used the knife to cut Amy, 13, free of her seatbelt.

Soon, paramedics were working on Amy. Roseanne went along when the ambulance took Amy to a hospital. Other paramedics worked on Jeanette.

In the field, covered by a sheet, lay Garry. James stared at the body.

"Did I go with my daughter or did I stay with my dad? It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make — leaving my dad on the side of the road," he later said.

He drove himself and Melissa to the hospital. There, James met his wife, her face stained with tears.

Amy was dead.

Sometime after the accident, a sheriff’s deputy and one of the passing motorists who came to the family’s aid, asked James about the tires on his father’s Ford.

Through the night, as James called family members and friends with news of the deaths, he also watched news reports of the recall.

Months later, on the eve of Amy’s 14th birthday, Feb. 23, the Meeks filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford.

Dozens of cases brought against Ford and the tire company already have been settled, and settlement talks continue in hundreds of others. No cases have gone to trial so far.

The Meeks said they won’t settle their case.

"Garry Lynn Meek and Amy Lynn Meek. That was their names, and I want the companies to know that," James said.

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