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| Heavy Extrication for East Ridge EAST RIDGE, TENN – Sunday, July 12, 2009 at about 8:00 PM, and East Ridge firefighters had only been back in their stations for a few minutes from battling a large commercial structure fire when the call came out of a single vehicle accident, truck versus pole, in the 500 block of McBrien Road. Lifeguard EMS was on the scene in minutes and reported a single pickup truck into a pole with heavy entrapment of the driver. Battalion 1, Commander Mike Williams arrived and immediately issued an “all call” for additional personnel and began issuing assignments for Squad 2 and Quint 1. The extended cab Chevrolet Silverado struck a wooden electric pole with the driver’s door causing major intrusion (about 30 inches). The pole came to rest inside the cab pinning the driver. To make matters worse the pieces of the pole and the truck were sitting in a ditch on an angle and live wires were on the fence adjacent to it.. As some firefighters attempted to make entry into the vehicle to get to the unresponsive patient, others began cribbing the unstable vehicle. Suddenly the driver involuntarily stepped on the accelerator and the still running vehicle lurched forward and the tires began rotating at high speed. The rubber began burning off the back tires and smoke obscured the area. Firefighter Randy Albright immediately forced himself through the broken passenger side window and struggled across the interior of the truck in order to turn off the ignition. The tires burning on the ground caused a small fire to break out on the driver’s side rear but it was quickly extinguished. While paramedics with Lifeguard struggled to provide patient care in the cramped area, firefighters took out the front and back windows, removed both doors from the passenger side, cut the A, B and C posts on the passenger side and the A and C posts on the driver’ s side. They removed the roof and rolled the dash and cut away part of the dash, finally freeing the patient after about 45 minutes. The patient received some care in the adjacent ambulance and then was taken across a parking lot and placed into Life Force helicopter. He was transported in very critical condition to Erlanger Hospital. The cause of the accident is unknown at this time and is being investigated by the East Ridge Police Department. At the time of the accident roadways were slick from a major storm that had just passed through the area. |
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