Fire and adrenaline on Hwy 101
How do you write about saving someone's life and make it into a political statement about working together, recommend someone for commendation, and try not beat your own drum? It's natural to shrug off something like helping pull someone out of a fiery car wreck in the nick of time as just "I was there at the right time and place." I remember shrugging when someone called me a hero on Sunday when I came up out of the woods where the car was burning furiously by then. And I told a Oregon State Patrol officer that the other guy with me had saved the guy's life. I have the distinct feeling this minimizing business happens all the time.
My son, Jesse, minimizes his escapades I know. I remember him stating as almost an afterthought that he had been selected to help in the physical capture of the most despotic dictator in the world at the time, Saddam Hussein. So maybe just focusing on the DOING part is in our DNA. I have also spent a lot of time on the ocean commercial fishing, which is a continuous battle to keep something that wants to be on the bottom of the ocean, on top of it, while trying to make money while you're at it. And other action adventure occupations in Alaska where you have to pretty much ignore physical discomfort.
When Terry and I first saw the overturned vehicle just south of Gold Beach on Highway 101 along the coast, we took just a few seconds to decide that we had to do something. That equated to a hundred yards of road travel before I said "let me out." Terry stopped the car for me to get out and she checked her cell phone to call 911, but there wasn't cell coverage there. I took off running back up the highway and she continued driving to find a cell phone signal. She didn't have to drive far to notice a bar on her phone so she called in the accident. She got dropped and called again and gave the dispatcher the location.
In the meantime, I was running along the roadway and getting winded, so I slowed to a walk. Someone else was running up behind me with flip-flops and he stopped too. I remember thinking, "this guy isn't going to be much help if he's winded too and in flip-flops to boot." That's when I knew I had to do it myself. There had been a car across the road from the accident, but those two people were in the high visibility vests of the people controlling traffic for a movie shoot that was going on in the near vicinity. I figured the way they were running around and taking off their vests, that they wouldn't be much help either.
I don't remember the rest of the run or jumping the guard rail or even much of scrambling through the brush to get to the other side of the vehicle. I think when I started running again the adrenaline was starting to kick in. By then the whisp of smoke had turned to tounges of flame rising from the engine area of the underside of the car. I didn't know what kind of car it was when I started looking for a door handle in the brush. One of the film crew traffic people, I think it was, said they had heard voices and sure enough I saw a arm wave inside the smoke filled cab.
Fumbling around for a door knob on an upside down vehicle in the brush took a few seconds, pulling the tree branches away and realizing that everything was not where it should have been. The main thing I remember about trying the door handle was not the struggle with the actual handle, but the vehicle rocking back and forth. That didn't work so I started looking for a back door, because the cab extended on back. The search was a short one, because the rest of the cab was short indeed, just a jump-seat area and definitely no door. So it was back to the drawing boards.
About then the smoke started getting real thick and black in my immediate vicinity, as in going down my lungs. Burning plastic is some nasty stuff and I'd sure have a word with the car manufacturers about how fast a car can catch on fire from just turning over. That slowed me up but it didn't last long.
That's about the time the guy in the white t-shirt showed up. I told him the door wouldn't open, but he tried it anyway. Then he hauled off and kicked in the windshield with a couple of swift kicks. No hard boots, just a lot of muscle. I hadn't had time to think of any other plan Bs before he got there. I did start hollering up to the growing crowd on the road for a rock to break the side window, and a fire extinguisher.
We got a fire extinguisher first, which was about empty. The Delta Force type guy threw it down in disgust and declared it was empty. I picked it up and tried anyway and it shot a jet of contents right past my ear. Not taking any time to smirk at my folly, I directed the business end at the fire in the engine compartment that was sure distracting me, being just four or five feet away. About this time something blew up above us and fire and smoke increased to the degree that my wife, who was on the other side of the road, backed our van up twenty yards or so. I suppose the explosion kept the rescue crew down to just the t-shirt and me. I don't blame them, the vehicle was looking real ugly.
Right after we got the fire extinguisher, we finally got something hard to use on the window in the form of a car jack someone handed to us. The t-shirt took about a second or two to swing on the side window and clear out the remaining glass. Then the guy reached in and found the seat-belt was stuck, and called for a knife, which someone immediately produced. Down went the lap belt. Still stuck. Got to get the chest strap. Where's the knife. Oh, yeah, right where it landed after discarding it from the first go. Chest harness free, drop the knife, take a second to think. It seemed like we were communicating non-verbally. That was another weird part.
Then we both reached in and grabbed part of the guy and hauled. It didn't seem like I had done much before the guy was half-ways out, resting his back on the top of the window frame. I saw that the t-shirt had a grip on the driver's belt. That sure made sense to me, pulling on a natural hand hold in the middle of his body mass. The t-shirt took another tug and the guy was out and on the ground. His leg was on fire so I patted out the flames with my hand. That turned out to be not good for me, but the guy was moaning and he stopped after that.
Then some other guys showed up to help carry the victim up to the road. Besides one of my legs had fallen in a deep hole about then. I picked up a shoe that had fallen off on the way out the truck's window. It was covered with melted plastic and I realized then that the black on my hand was melted plastic too.
When I got up on the road I patted the t-shirt on his back and told him he had saved the man's life. I pointed him out to a Oregon State Police trooper as well. The last I saw of the t-shirted marvel he was leaning over the victim on the side of the road looking into his face. Lots of other people, including a nurse, were there as well. There were dozens of people on the road by then, and the ambulance had just arrived, and I don't know how many patrol cars. Not all that much time had elapsed. Well, I guess just the time it takes an ambulance to drive the about seven miles.
I figured I'd just be in the way at that point so I started back to our van. One guy stopped me and called me a hero. He was parked closest to the wreck, so I figured he saw a lot of the action, or even helped by bringing the jack, fire extinguisher or knife. I thought it a little ironic that as I passed by the flaming wreck, which my now was burning the power lines, that someone shooed me away saying it was too dangerous to be so close. So I jogged by and hopped in with Terry and we headed back to Gold Beach since we couldn't turn back for home.
We wanted some lunch by then anyway, so we stopped in at the Barnacle Bistro. There I had the best mussels I've ever had. They were poached in curry and cider: an old family recipe. By then my hands were blistering pretty good so Terry figured we'd better visit the hospital and get some Silvadine on them. Besides we might find out how the victim of the crash made out. After all, the nurse at the scene said she heard bones crunching together.
We read on a paper on burns they gave us that I had second degree burns, even though the doctor said they were first degree burns. And being that my wife is also a nurse. I was being bandaged while they were checking out the accident victim at the same time in the ER. The doctor said he only had some burns on that one leg I patted out the flames on. It was a good end to the episode for us, knowing the elderly man would live to drive another day. Don't know how he managed to get upside down on the other side of the guard rail. Maybe they won't let him drive for awhile.
For a few days I'd even wake up in the morning seeing the cab of that truck a flaming inferno, just after I had patted out the flames on the guy's leg. I think we got him out well shy of thirty seconds before it would have been too late. The efficiency of the movements, the knowledge of what to do, and muscle power of the man in the white t-shirt was surely the saving grace. We both were the epitome of the irrepressible, I just didn't have the experience in this kind of emergency. And for this I would like to recommend this man for a commendation from the State of Oregon. Besides volunteering for such hazardous work while not on duty, and in the face of significant danger to his own life due to the possibility of a catastrophic explosion, he displayed one of the most technically efficient feats of problem solving/lifesaving that I think is possible. And I would know, I was right at his side the whole time he was working.
There is one amazing aspect of doing something like that together with someone else; communication becomes very efficient so as to minimize energy loss. Maybe I provided some assistance in procuring supplies for him to use to free that man, put out a fire, and helped him pull the guy out of the vehicle. There are a lot of problems to solve in society these days it seems and I'm pretty sure it should be done at least by twos. Like the VERY old saying goes, "a two strand cord is not easily broken."
As it turns out, the man in the white t-shirt, with cuts on his arm from reaching through broken windows, is a Oregon State Police supervisor. I found that out when helping my son with a car insurance matter. The insurance agent calculated that I must have been one of the rescuers, after hearing my story on why I couldn't shake his hand with my bandaged one. He had seen a clip on the accident that Channel 12 in Medford had done on the accident, and who had identified the victim and the Officer. They inserted someone from Gold Beach as the other rescuer, so Terry called the station to correct that. They corrected the written story in their archives, but they couldn't correct the audio of who the rescuers were.
Someone recently asked me and Terry what we were going to for excitement and adventure this winter. As for me, I decided that mellow would be a good way to be for awhile, at least until I stop reliving how close to dying that elderly man was, just feet in front of me.
My son, Jesse, minimizes his escapades I know. I remember him stating as almost an afterthought that he had been selected to help in the physical capture of the most despotic dictator in the world at the time, Saddam Hussein. So maybe just focusing on the DOING part is in our DNA. I have also spent a lot of time on the ocean commercial fishing, which is a continuous battle to keep something that wants to be on the bottom of the ocean, on top of it, while trying to make money while you're at it. And other action adventure occupations in Alaska where you have to pretty much ignore physical discomfort.
When Terry and I first saw the overturned vehicle just south of Gold Beach on Highway 101 along the coast, we took just a few seconds to decide that we had to do something. That equated to a hundred yards of road travel before I said "let me out." Terry stopped the car for me to get out and she checked her cell phone to call 911, but there wasn't cell coverage there. I took off running back up the highway and she continued driving to find a cell phone signal. She didn't have to drive far to notice a bar on her phone so she called in the accident. She got dropped and called again and gave the dispatcher the location.
In the meantime, I was running along the roadway and getting winded, so I slowed to a walk. Someone else was running up behind me with flip-flops and he stopped too. I remember thinking, "this guy isn't going to be much help if he's winded too and in flip-flops to boot." That's when I knew I had to do it myself. There had been a car across the road from the accident, but those two people were in the high visibility vests of the people controlling traffic for a movie shoot that was going on in the near vicinity. I figured the way they were running around and taking off their vests, that they wouldn't be much help either.
I don't remember the rest of the run or jumping the guard rail or even much of scrambling through the brush to get to the other side of the vehicle. I think when I started running again the adrenaline was starting to kick in. By then the whisp of smoke had turned to tounges of flame rising from the engine area of the underside of the car. I didn't know what kind of car it was when I started looking for a door handle in the brush. One of the film crew traffic people, I think it was, said they had heard voices and sure enough I saw a arm wave inside the smoke filled cab.
Fumbling around for a door knob on an upside down vehicle in the brush took a few seconds, pulling the tree branches away and realizing that everything was not where it should have been. The main thing I remember about trying the door handle was not the struggle with the actual handle, but the vehicle rocking back and forth. That didn't work so I started looking for a back door, because the cab extended on back. The search was a short one, because the rest of the cab was short indeed, just a jump-seat area and definitely no door. So it was back to the drawing boards.
About then the smoke started getting real thick and black in my immediate vicinity, as in going down my lungs. Burning plastic is some nasty stuff and I'd sure have a word with the car manufacturers about how fast a car can catch on fire from just turning over. That slowed me up but it didn't last long.
That's about the time the guy in the white t-shirt showed up. I told him the door wouldn't open, but he tried it anyway. Then he hauled off and kicked in the windshield with a couple of swift kicks. No hard boots, just a lot of muscle. I hadn't had time to think of any other plan Bs before he got there. I did start hollering up to the growing crowd on the road for a rock to break the side window, and a fire extinguisher.
We got a fire extinguisher first, which was about empty. The Delta Force type guy threw it down in disgust and declared it was empty. I picked it up and tried anyway and it shot a jet of contents right past my ear. Not taking any time to smirk at my folly, I directed the business end at the fire in the engine compartment that was sure distracting me, being just four or five feet away. About this time something blew up above us and fire and smoke increased to the degree that my wife, who was on the other side of the road, backed our van up twenty yards or so. I suppose the explosion kept the rescue crew down to just the t-shirt and me. I don't blame them, the vehicle was looking real ugly.
Right after we got the fire extinguisher, we finally got something hard to use on the window in the form of a car jack someone handed to us. The t-shirt took about a second or two to swing on the side window and clear out the remaining glass. Then the guy reached in and found the seat-belt was stuck, and called for a knife, which someone immediately produced. Down went the lap belt. Still stuck. Got to get the chest strap. Where's the knife. Oh, yeah, right where it landed after discarding it from the first go. Chest harness free, drop the knife, take a second to think. It seemed like we were communicating non-verbally. That was another weird part.
Then we both reached in and grabbed part of the guy and hauled. It didn't seem like I had done much before the guy was half-ways out, resting his back on the top of the window frame. I saw that the t-shirt had a grip on the driver's belt. That sure made sense to me, pulling on a natural hand hold in the middle of his body mass. The t-shirt took another tug and the guy was out and on the ground. His leg was on fire so I patted out the flames with my hand. That turned out to be not good for me, but the guy was moaning and he stopped after that.
Then some other guys showed up to help carry the victim up to the road. Besides one of my legs had fallen in a deep hole about then. I picked up a shoe that had fallen off on the way out the truck's window. It was covered with melted plastic and I realized then that the black on my hand was melted plastic too.
When I got up on the road I patted the t-shirt on his back and told him he had saved the man's life. I pointed him out to a Oregon State Police trooper as well. The last I saw of the t-shirted marvel he was leaning over the victim on the side of the road looking into his face. Lots of other people, including a nurse, were there as well. There were dozens of people on the road by then, and the ambulance had just arrived, and I don't know how many patrol cars. Not all that much time had elapsed. Well, I guess just the time it takes an ambulance to drive the about seven miles.
I figured I'd just be in the way at that point so I started back to our van. One guy stopped me and called me a hero. He was parked closest to the wreck, so I figured he saw a lot of the action, or even helped by bringing the jack, fire extinguisher or knife. I thought it a little ironic that as I passed by the flaming wreck, which my now was burning the power lines, that someone shooed me away saying it was too dangerous to be so close. So I jogged by and hopped in with Terry and we headed back to Gold Beach since we couldn't turn back for home.
We wanted some lunch by then anyway, so we stopped in at the Barnacle Bistro. There I had the best mussels I've ever had. They were poached in curry and cider: an old family recipe. By then my hands were blistering pretty good so Terry figured we'd better visit the hospital and get some Silvadine on them. Besides we might find out how the victim of the crash made out. After all, the nurse at the scene said she heard bones crunching together.
We read on a paper on burns they gave us that I had second degree burns, even though the doctor said they were first degree burns. And being that my wife is also a nurse. I was being bandaged while they were checking out the accident victim at the same time in the ER. The doctor said he only had some burns on that one leg I patted out the flames on. It was a good end to the episode for us, knowing the elderly man would live to drive another day. Don't know how he managed to get upside down on the other side of the guard rail. Maybe they won't let him drive for awhile.
For a few days I'd even wake up in the morning seeing the cab of that truck a flaming inferno, just after I had patted out the flames on the guy's leg. I think we got him out well shy of thirty seconds before it would have been too late. The efficiency of the movements, the knowledge of what to do, and muscle power of the man in the white t-shirt was surely the saving grace. We both were the epitome of the irrepressible, I just didn't have the experience in this kind of emergency. And for this I would like to recommend this man for a commendation from the State of Oregon. Besides volunteering for such hazardous work while not on duty, and in the face of significant danger to his own life due to the possibility of a catastrophic explosion, he displayed one of the most technically efficient feats of problem solving/lifesaving that I think is possible. And I would know, I was right at his side the whole time he was working.
There is one amazing aspect of doing something like that together with someone else; communication becomes very efficient so as to minimize energy loss. Maybe I provided some assistance in procuring supplies for him to use to free that man, put out a fire, and helped him pull the guy out of the vehicle. There are a lot of problems to solve in society these days it seems and I'm pretty sure it should be done at least by twos. Like the VERY old saying goes, "a two strand cord is not easily broken."
As it turns out, the man in the white t-shirt, with cuts on his arm from reaching through broken windows, is a Oregon State Police supervisor. I found that out when helping my son with a car insurance matter. The insurance agent calculated that I must have been one of the rescuers, after hearing my story on why I couldn't shake his hand with my bandaged one. He had seen a clip on the accident that Channel 12 in Medford had done on the accident, and who had identified the victim and the Officer. They inserted someone from Gold Beach as the other rescuer, so Terry called the station to correct that. They corrected the written story in their archives, but they couldn't correct the audio of who the rescuers were.
Someone recently asked me and Terry what we were going to for excitement and adventure this winter. As for me, I decided that mellow would be a good way to be for awhile, at least until I stop reliving how close to dying that elderly man was, just feet in front of me.
posted by Alaskacafe at 2:26 PM
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