Chapter Three........A most horrible day.

An important part of being a police officer is influencing and controlling the flow of traffic with one goal in mind.......safety. The safer people are while operating their car's and trucks, the less people die while in transent. But, as we all know, people live very hectic lives, and there are dozens of things to distract otherwise safe drivers. The repetitive motion of driving, as we have all done thousands of times, becomes second nature, and often we take our safety for granted. On average in the United States, 45,000 to 50,000 people dies each year in traffic accidents, and several hundred thousand more are seriously injured. As so, each police officer works dozens of accidents each year.

During my first year as a police officer, actually in my second month, and just days after being released from field training, and on my own, I was dispatched to my first serious vehicle accident ( and little did I know at the time, the most horrific I would ever see in my entire career). The call came out like this " Injury accident, 13 Hwy, and T hwy, possibly people trapped". It was a clear day in late summer, early afternoon. I activated my lights and sirens and punched the accelerator. I felt excitement go through me. Running lights and sirens is always an adrenaline rush, but especially when you are a rookie, and you really look forward to it. Not that you look forward to the calls, but look forward to a justified reason to drive warp speed......While I was en route a veteran State Trooper radioed me to let me know he was not to far off and was going to stop by and assist. He knew I was a rookie and may need the help, and I was glad to hear he was responding.

Upon arrival I knew it was going to be bad. Traffic was at a standstill, and just east of the intersection I observed a gold in color, early eighties model station wagon upside down, with heavy front end damage and the roof partially crushed. In a nearby ditch, on it's side, was a concrete mixer truck, the concrete mixer truck that had ran the flashing red light and struck this car. A crowd had gathered and several good Samaritans were running towards me even before I could get my patrol car stopped. A man wearing a UPS uniform told me there was a man and kids in the car, and that the cars roof had collapsed too much to get them out, and that he thought the driver might have a broken back, but every one was conscious. Then he gave me the bad news: the gas tank had been punctured and most of its contents had been spread on the vehicles now smoking undercarriage. My face flushed and I could feel true fear shoot through me. I had always feared this situation while I was in the academy, and I wasn't sure I was up for it now. I radioed in to dispatch that I needed the fire department to respond ASAP.......I also radioed the trooper who was responding, and I am pretty sure that my voice was trembling, told him I needed him to "get here as quick as you can"........... I got the fire extinguisher from the trunk of my patrol car, and sat it about 40 feet from the station wagon, and then approached the drivers side of the car. The UPS driver was an immense help, and retrieved his own fire extinguisher from his delivery truck, and had a couple onlookers get theirs as well. Just in case I thought. I tried to open the drivers door, but it was a futile effort. I lay on my stomach and looked inside. The driver was a male in his 30's, clean cut, thin. He was in an awkward position on his side, sort of pinned beneath the the dash and crushed windshield. I could see an obvious compound fracture to his lower leg, as I could see bone protruding from his pants leg, and there was blood around it. He also had many facial lacerations, but most were superficial, head wounds tend to bleed a lot wether they are serious or not, and the amount of blood isn't always a good indicator of the severity of the injury. I yelled in at him, and was startled to get a response. He was conscious and coherent, and considering the situation, fairly calm. He told me his name was Mark, and I told him my name. I just wanted to keep him calm until we could get him extricated. I could see two kids about 3 and 5 in the middle of the back seat dangling from seat belts. Both were crying, but appeared otherwise, uninjured. I could reach the seat belt of one and undid it. This child was a girl of about 5 and she crawled towards her father until she could physically touch him. He was verbally trying to sooth her. Now the second child was a boy of about 3, whose crying increased with his sister moving away from him. I couldn't reach the latch to his seat belt, and the vehicle was too crushed for me to get inside, but I was able to cut the seat belt with my pocket knife, and the little guy was able to crawl up to where his sister was and partially lay on her. I became aware of the highway patrolman that was now next to me "what do you think Rick" he said, through a half smile that I am sure was only for my benefit, as he too went down to his stomach next to me. I could hear sirens of the fire trucks in the distance, and felt a wave of relief wash over me......and then something weird happened...

I heard a strange almost bass like whoosh, and the loud sigh of the crowd, I also could feel the air around me move upwards towards the sound. The gas on the undercarriage had combusted, and the slow motion explosion was sucking all of the nearby air towards it. I jumped back, as did the trooper. The father in the car knew what had happened and began yelling for us to get his kids out. The entire underside of the car's belly was completely on fire, as was a sizable area of nearby grass. For the moment the interior of the car was not on fire. I felt incredibly helpless and afraid, for a brief moment I feared I would run away, but I didn't. Myself, along with the UPS driver and another man deployed our fire extinguishers. A fire extinguisher works pretty well, and we did get some knock down of the flames, and I thought we just might be able to put it out. But, fire extinguishers don't last for ever, and after about 10-15 seconds we were out, and the fire came back alive. When car's burn there are all kinds of weird sounds. As tires heat, then burn they hiss and pop, and pockets of lubricant, and oil burst. The fire began to burn through into the car. At this point the fire had been burning for about 30 or 40 seconds. I could hear the fire trucks getting closer, and could physically see them coming up the highway. A sick feeling shot through to the core of my being, they weren't going to make it in time. As the fire started in the vehicles interior, the father and kids began to scream for us to get them out, mostly the dad screaming to get his kids out. The trooper and I, along with the UPS driver went into a frenzied attack on the vehicle trying to pry the doors open with a tire tool, and make enough room to get the kids out. The fire was in the back, working it's way towards the front, quicker and quicker, and almost methodically advancing with a steady pace. The smoke was thick, but drifting up as it does, wasn't building up enough to mercifully take these people. I couldn't believe what was occurring right in front of me. I was a police officer, and my job was to make the world safe for others, and to save people from harm, I was a superhero, and super hero's never fail. The heat was getting intense, I was able to grab a leg of one of the kids, and I am not sure which child but I began to yank, and with that the child was screaming, I felt something in the child's leg give way, realizing later that I probably had broken it, but to no avail, I was only causing the kid more pain, and making him/her more fearful in their last moments of life. The fire began to overtake them. The trooper was braver than me ( he had kids and I didn't, and I think this played on him heavily), as the people inside began to burn I considered for a brief moment of shooting them, I know this sound crazy but it went through my mind that it would be more humane, and I would want someone to do that for me and my family, but I was either thinking to rational, or I was a coward but I didn't do it. But the trooper was still reaching into the car, grabbing whatever he could, pulling back handful's of melted skin, and we ( the ups driver and I) had to finally drag him back away from the car when his uniform blouse caught fire and his skin was actually smoking and peeling. An odd thing happened as the fire got closer, and began to take these victims. The children stopped screaming and crying before the fire touched them, and I'd like to think that their guardian angels took them before the fire did. The fire department arrived about 30 seconds after the car was fully involved, and had the fire out in short order. But it didn't matter at this point, this family was gone.

I was in shock after this. I realized that my uniform shirt was melted ( polyester), and that I had several small burns, and a couple large enough to blister. The trooper had received second and third degree burns to his face, arms, and hands in his effort to save this family. He was life flighted to a Springfield burn unit, and I found out later that all though he did recover physically from his injuries, he was never the same again and took a partially disability retirement for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The UPS driver also had a few small burns. I never got his name, and I really wish I had. He placed himself in danger, and it wasn't even his responsibility or job. I guess he answered to something higher than a job title, he was human, and a decent man. I never got to thank him.

I took a couple days off work after this wreck, and did what I did to hide my emotions. I went out and got drunk with my Non-Cop friend (became a cop later) Shane in a downtown bar, and tried to pick a fight. I ended up passed out, and sick.

Even though it's been almost 17 years since this wreck happened, I still feel somewhat ashamed of the fear I felt, and the fact that I wasn't able to save them. If I learned any hard lessons from this event, it was that police officers aren't super hero's, and that you can't save everyone that needs saving.