BAINBRIDGE — Two people who were hurt in a two-car crash near the Agate Pass Bridge were airlifted from the Bainbridge Island Fire Department’s station on Madison Avenue at approximately 3 p.m. Monday.
The bridge was closed to traffic until 5:30, about an hour later than originally expected. Tow trucks were en route at 4 p.m.
In a rare double airlift, two helicopters from Airlift Northwest arrived at the fire hall before 3 p.m. and landed on the grassy lawn on each side of the helipad. The three-person crews from each aircraft waited as emergency workers extracted a man and a woman who were trapped in both vehicles — a black sedan and a green minivan — and brought them to the station for transport.
The first patient arrived approximately 15 minutes before the second. The first helicopter was in the air and headed toward a Seattle hospital as the sirens on the second-arriving medic unit could be heard coming south on Highway 305 to the fire station just after 3 p.m.
Details on the victims’ injuries were not immediately available.
The car crash happened at roughly 2 p.m. in nearly the same location as the accident in August 2012 at the bridge that left three injured and closed the highway for hours.
The accident Monday left traffic snarled on both sides of the Agate Pass Bridge. The Washington State Department of Transportation reported at 3 p.m. that Highway 305, the only roadway off Bainbridge Island, would stay closed for at least another 90 minutes.
Washington State Ferries issued an advisory to travelers on the Bainbridge-Seattle route that the highway would be closed due to the crash.