Adam Spencer / Triplicate Contributing WriterMembers of the Del Norte, California, Search and Rescue team climb up an embankment of the Middle Fork Smith River shortly after inspecting the scene of a submerged vehicle in the river Sunday morning.

Steve Fillman and Fred Hansen Jr. were almost home from visiting Fillman’s mother at an Oregon nursing home last weekend when their car plunged off the highway into the Smith River near Gasquet, California.

A witness said it was pouring rain Saturday evening when the car tumbled off an unprotected embankment on U.S. 199 near Hardscrabble Creek.

Almost a week later the vehicle remains underwater, both men believed still inside, as the river proves too high and swift for rescue and recovery operations to proceed safely. Continued persistent rain this past week will delay the next expected opportunity until Tuesday or Wednesday, said Del Norte Search and Rescue Coordinator Terry McNamara.

California Highway Patrol will not yet confirm identities of the presumed occupants of the submerged vehicle, but several relatives of Fillman and Hansen said CHP contacted them recently in connection with the investigation.

“God, he knew that road like the back of his hand,” said Fillman’s wife, Debbie Fillman. “Somebody behind them said the weather was way, way, bad, and I think they just hydroplaned and went off the edge.”

Fillman said her husband grew up in Cave Junction, Oregon, and had lived in Crescent City, California, with her since they got married more than 20 years ago. He celebrated his 60th birthday Nov. 30, days before the accident and within a week of receiving a bone cancer diagnosis.

On Friday, Dec. 4, he took his wife’s 1960s Ford to visit his mother, who recently had hip surgery, in Southern Oregon.

Hansen, a friend and neighbor of the Fillmans, came along for the ride.

Debbie Fillman said her husband called around 6:30 or 7 p.m. the following night to say he would be home in about an hour.

Around 8:20 p.m. that night, CHP received its first report of the accident. At that time there was only one tire from the car still visible above the surface of the water. By morning, the entire car was submerged more than a foot.

CHP said they recovered a license plate presumed to be from the Fillman car and used it to identify the owner.

Family members were notified later that night.

Tracey Winters of Lamar, Missouri, said her sister-in-law called her at 3:30 a.m. Sunday on Dec. 6 to notify her of Fillman’s accident.

“I just really want to know if they are in the vehicle or down river,” Hansen’s niece, Cheryl Hansen, wrote Monday online.

Rescue officials said early this week they are hopeful the vehicle and its presumed occupants will stay in place until recovery efforts can access them next week.

As of Monday, a survey of the area by Coast Guard helicopters and SAR team members did not find any bodies in the river.

Del Norte County Sheriff Cmdr. Bill Steven said last weekend’s crash is believed to have no connection with the appearance of the body of an unidentified man who washed ashore in Brookings on Tuesday morning.

Winters said she was told by CHP that “there is a 50-50 chance” that Fillman and Hansen’s bodies are still inside the car.

McNamara would not confirm the identity of the presumed drivers, but he said the vehicle is believed to have crashed near a sharp left-hand turn while driving southbound between mile markers 10.30 and 10.60 on U.S. 199.

He recalls only one fatality out of five or six car-in-river collisions near that stretch of the highway in his 15 years with Search and Rescue .

Before his time, said McNamara, he is aware of only one similar instance, many decades ago, of delayed recovery of a submerged vehicle because of water conditions.

According to data from Caltrans, California’s highway department, during the 10-year interval beginning Jan. 1, 2003, there have been 13 injury collisions with 18 injured parties between mile markers 10.30 and and 10.60 on U.S. 199.

Of those 13 collisions, 11 were in passenger vehicles and one each in a pickup or motorcycle. Intoxicated driving was determined to be an influence in 15 percent of those accidents, compared with an average of 10.8 percent for almost 2,000 accidents surveyed districtwide.

CalTrans spokesman Eli Rohl said he did not have information readily available on fatal collisions on that stretch of highway, nor did he have available documentation of accidents subsequent to Jan. 1, 2013.

Rohl said proposed safety measures near those mile markers include a shoulder improvement project and speed advisory signs, although the sharp left-hand curve on the southbound lane already includes a sign advising a 40 mph speed.

Rohl wrote online on Tuesday that the added protection of placing more guardrails near the bare sections of the highway needed to be weighed with potential hazards.

“Guardrail is intended to deflect vehicles — but in this case, where would those vehicles go? There’s a good chance they could bounce back into oncoming traffic, and now this guardrail could be a large part of why otherwise uninvolved motorists were just injured or killed.”

A small roadside memorial was recently put up near the turnout where last weekend’s accident occurred.

Fillman and Hansen are the only brothers of Tracey Winters, of Lamar, Missouri, and Cyndi Bratcher, of Garden City, Idaho, respectively.

“We talked on the phone every night,” Winters said Friday, “I’m telling you, I really miss those phone calls.”

Reach David Grieder at dgrieder@triplicate.com