Some Say Angels Were There That Day

Our traffic lane was clogged with stranded and curious motorists and vehicles were backed up more then a mile from the car-crash to which we were heading. With emergency lights flashing, we methodically crept our way through the oncoming-traffic. A fire unit stationed closer to the crash-site than we were had already reached the accident, but had not yet radioed any information about the scene. We just figured that they already had their hands full. Being the second fire-unit on site, we were anxious for the radio to feed us any info and instructions on what we were in for. As my extrication unit rolled onto the scene I was shocked by the devastation I saw.


Both north and south bound lanes of the highway were blocked with accident debris. I have been on scene at hundreds of car crashes over the course of my career, but this was one of the most horrific wrecks I had ever seen. The wreckage of a car was upside down in the middle of the highway looking like one of those squashed cubes of metal that is left after they crush a car in the wrecking yard. It is difficult to fathom that just minutes before, someone’s dad, mom, brothers or sisters had been riding in this car.

A safe distance from the carnage, I brought my extrication truck to a stop and stepped out. My brain was reeling trying to take in what had just happened here and what we were going to do about it when my eyes met those of the on-scene commander’s. We had been fighting fires together for many years and by now we were like blood brothers within the fire department— his eyes told me this was a bad one. I will never forget— all he yelled to me was, “Blaze!” and pointed over the edge of the highway. As I turned to look where he had directed my attention, I was shocked to see a fifteen-person passenger van lying on its side in the middle of a small shallow stream 30 foot over a steep embankment.

As is true in most small rural fire departments, there are never enough volunteers to fill all the boots needed during a horrific event and our small department also suffered from this manpower shortage. Usually, the first-arriving fire-crews of one or two guys would start working on resolving what was happening in the middle of the highway while waiting for additional crews to take care of what was going on over the bank.

I pulled tight the chin strap on my fire helmet and shot down the embankment. From the roadside I had only been able to see the under carriage of the van, but now I was hearing the cries for help. Off to my left I saw a man who obviously had been involved in the accident. He was sitting on a large rock slumped over holding his head in his blood soaked hands with his sock-covered feet still in the stream. I really had to fight the urge to run over to him to see how he was doing. But we are rigorously trained to walk completely around an incident before undertaking any action to resolve it. You must see the whole crash scene from all its different angles to assess its hidden dangers before acting; we call it performing the “Circle of Safety”.

As I began my circle around the back doors of the van, looking along the roofline of the overturned van, I was startled to see an elderly woman lying on her back. She had been partially ejected out one of the back side windows of the van. Only her head and shoulders were visible with the van’s weight pinning her down tightly. She had not been crushed by the van, but her face was under the surface of the stream most of the time. Periodically, she was able to find enough strength to lift her mouth and nose above the cold water and gasp for what she could only think would be her last breath.

My “Circle of Safety” stopped right there. I dropped to my knees in the cold water to help her keep her weary head above the waterline—all the while promising her that help was on its way. I knew there was no way I could lift the weight of the van to free grandma. I couldn’t leave grandma, but I kept hearing the continuous, moaning cries for help from inside the van. I still didn’t know what I would find on the other side of that van’s thin roof. Unable to leave grandma because I was holding her head out of the water, I noticed that the man I had seen sitting on the rock near me was now even more slumped over. He was in more distress than when first seen, but I wasn’t able to go to him. Still being the only firefighter down at the van I realized I was the only help these people had.

To this day I don’t know why when I am involved in emergencies like these, time seems to slow way down. For me it is like watching a graphic movie clip in slow motion, I see more detail; I seem to think more clearly, in some odd way I feel more alive. While I don’t have a religious background, I do believe every person on this earth has been placed here for some purpose. For many, many years now I have felt I was placed here on earth and lured into the fire service for one reason and one reason only—to take charge of things that have gone to hell in a hand-basket and to restore order to them. Like the popular T.V. show “MacGyver,” where in each episode the quiet hero collects simple objects around him to help him resolve the predicament in which he finds himself trapped, I believe any dedicated fireman possess that same ability— what I call “the art of MacGyverism”, i.e., finding simple things within your reach to help you handle the emergency at hand.

With grandma’s head still in my hands I shot a glance up to the highway looking for any firemen I could call for immediate assistance. None were to be found, but my “MacGyverism” did kick in.

Anytime there is a crash or fire you get what we call “looky loos.” These are people who stroll up to the scene to stand around just to get a closer view of the real life drama unfolding. As I looked up to the edge of the highway, seeing none of my fire buddies available to help, I did notice what I could only describe as three college football players looking down at me over the embankment. They obviously were linemen— big, square-shouldered, strong guys, wearing lettermen-jackets and nicely dressed. I yelled at them, “Get down here!” They looked back at me in disbelief so I made my order more emphatic for them to get down here “NOW!” I remember them glancing at each other, nodding, then sliding over the steep edge of the highway coming to grandma’s and my assistance. As they splashed into the water next to me, I barked, “Lift this van up and I will throw rocks under it!” I thought [hoped] it was possible that the weight of the van would be supported on the van’s window and doorframes. If that worked we could then slide grandma out of the van’s crushed window to a reasonable semblance of safety.

All three of the football players looked at me dumbfounded, knowing they, too, could not lift the weight of this van— but adrenaline is a wonderful drug. With me yelling, “Heave-ho!” and with their adrenaline surging like mine was, they slowly managed to rock the van a couple of feet into the air. With the van window frame now not pinning grandma so tightly against the stony stream bottom I left grandma to fend for her self for a few moments while I started throwing large rocks and boulders under any part of the van that I thought could support some weight when my team mates let it back down. I remember thinking to myself, “Man, those are some nice tennis shoes they are wearing in the water.” while I maneuvered around those heroes to wedge rocks under the wreck with quick looks back at grandma, to make sure she was doing ok on her own.

It was at about this time that a good fire department buddy of mine made it down into the water with me where he took over holding grandma out of the water as best he could. After my football players eased the weight of the van down onto my makeshift chock blocks, we tried to free grandma from the wreckage, but she was stuck. We couldn’t budge her. Upon getting a closer look inside the van for the first time I saw that practically everybody else in the van was lying on top of grandma’s lower body and legs. Before we could remove grandma we would have to extricate the rest of the van’s occupants. After kicking out the rest of the smashed front windshield with my steel-toed fire boot, I finally made first contact with the rest of the injured souls trapped in this mess. By now more firefighters were arriving on scene and some were scrambling to help remove the people trapped inside the van. Stacked like cord wood, one at a time, each victim was placed on a backboard, strapped securely, passed through the front window, and carried up the embankment to ambulances waiting for them on the highway. One by one they were removed—I’m still working my way toward my grandma.

Standing hunched over in the back of the van was an older gentleman. On a couple of occasions we offered to help him get out of the crumpled van, but he refused and kept shuffling further toward the rear of the van. Not having time to argue with him we just kept packaging patients and removing them to relative safety.

This was a very difficult extrication for several reasons— there were so many patients, we didn’t want to step on any of them while removing others and then there was the potato salad that had flown out of its bowl landing everywhere making everything very slick. Finally I had excavated down through the pile of humanity to find my grandma while the old guy, standing bent over, and obviously in pain watched. I said, “Sir, it’s time for us to get you out of here.” He replied, “Young man, that is my wife (indicating my grandma) laying there and I’m not going anywhere unless she goes first.” Now, you can’t argue with that kind of reasoning so we gently strapped grandma to the umpteenth backboard and carefully eased her through the front window frame and up the hill to the team of medics that had now assembled. It was then just me and grandpa left in the wreckage with both of us trying to keep our footing while skating in the potato salad that was lubricating all the uneven surfaces. I noticed that one of his legs was badly broken. While waiting for the last backboard to arrive so we could reunite grandpa with grandma, I ask him if he would like to lean on my shoulder and take some weight off his injured leg and he did. Putting his arm around my shoulder he whispered in my ear, “Young man, you did one hell of a job here today!”

 With grandpa loaded up and being hauled up the “mountain” (which at the beginning of this story was just small a hill), I was, simply put, exhausted. With help I managed to scramble up to the highway. While pulling off my sweat-soaked turnout garb, I looked around for my football players because I wanted to thank them for helping to lift that van. I looked up the road and down the road but couldn’t find them. I found the fireman who had first come to help me while I was piling the rocks under the van, and asked if he had seen where my football players had gone. He looked at me with a puzzled look. I was tired and was probably a bit irritable too. I said, “Eddie, those football dudes, where are they?” Looking around anxiously, Eddie said, “Bill, there wasn’t anybody else down there with you when I got there.” Eddie was the religious type. He told me I had angels help me that day.

One of the crazy things about this fire business is that most of the time you have no idea what happens to the injured victims once the ambulance door closes and they speed away. I have often wondered how my grandma’s health turned out, did the guy slumping on the rock live, did angels really help me that day?