A Dinwiddie County, Virginia firefighter is crediting a deputy sheriff’s warning with saving his life as a tractor-trailer continued on a collision course with a fire engine on I-85 Sunday morning (previous coverage here). The wreck split the pumper in half, knock the cab off the chassis.
“I just happened to look up just in the nick of time to see this tractor trailer coming toward the back of the fire truck,” recounts Dinwiddie Sheriff’s Deputy Brian Fields. “It’s maybe 10 yards away at the most and I said ‘oh shoot, run.’”
From Dinwiddie Fire & EMS Facebook page
“I ran,” says Dinwiddie firefighter Lamonte Fields. “And the next thing I remember is tripping over something and falling down and just praying that I wasn’t going to get hit.”
From Dinwiddie Fire & EMS Facebook page
Both men can’t believe they are alive to even look at the aftermath of Sunday’s collision. The impact split a 51-thousand pound fire engine in half. But they both escaped with just scrapes and bruises.
