Duluth City Councilor Sharla Gardner flipped her car while driving down to St. Paul on Monday morning, but walked away uninjured.
"I don't have a scratch on me. I'm at the emergency room only because my doctor told me to go," Gardner said in the afternoon. "I'm very luck to be alive."
Gardner said she was headed down to the Capitol as part of Duluth and St. Louis County Days, an annual lobbying effort. A bus headed to the event was canceled due to the ice storm.
Gardner said she was traveling between Cloquet and Barnum on Interstate 35 when she hit a patch of ice, causing her 2006 Toyota Camry to spin about three times before hitting a skid strip on the side of the road, launching her airborne. She said she landed on all four tires.
"It was like somebody took a giant hand and batted my car," she said. "If I had gone a block ahead, I would have hit a tree and wouldn't be talking to you."
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Gardner said her car was likely completely totaled.
Many of the people who went to the Capitol left at about 6 a.m., said fellow City Councilor Jeff Anderson. Gardner said she wasn't comfortable driving when the roads were slick and in the dark, so decided to leave at about 8:15. This was to be Gardner's first trip to Duluth Days.
"The trooper told her she was the third car off the road in a stretch of a mile," Anderson said.
Anderson said he wasn't aware of anyone else who got into an accident traveling down to Duluth Days. He said he, Gary Eckenberg and Mayor Don Ness were the only elected city officials at the event.
