TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

DJ Says Trucker Was 'Voice Of Reason' In I-4 Chaos

Kathy Moore/The Tampa Tribune

Eric Rannebarger was on his way to work as a DJ for Max 98.3 in Lakeland on January 9, 2008 when he was involved in the I-4 pileup caused by a mixture of fog and smoke.

ADVERTISEMENT

By GRETCHEN PARKER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 16, 2008

POLK CITY - The remarkable thing was that he was still breathing.

Inside the pitch black and the smoke, cars were crashing into each other all around him. His own Mazda Protégé was wrinkled up like a squeezebox into the back of a Geo Tracker. But Eric Rannebarger was alive and awake.

The airbag had exploded into his chest, and the smell of it stung — like burning fiberglass. The pain in his sternum sucked the air out of him. When he pulled air in, a little at a time, most of it was wildfire smoke. He began to worry that he was having a heart attack.

He lived through it, and weeks later he realizes how amazing it is that he wasn't crushed in his car. That he didn't die on the side of the road, drowning in smoke, as he gripped the guardrail.

What was even more remarkable, he says, was what happened after that.

Rannebarger is the kind of guy everyone likes, even if they don't know him well. The kind of guy who has conversations with the clerk in the grocery line.

He has so much personality that he makes a living off it, by hosting his own morning drive-time show on a radio station in Lakeland. He has lots of friends.

But that morning he was alone, hurt, in the weeds on the side of Interstate 4.

He met someone who had no reason to care about him but did. The man wasn't his friend, but he took care of Rannebarger. This popular DJ, usually surrounded by people and shining in the attention of crowds, was blessed with the kindness of one person who didn't know anything about him.

It wasn't that he saved his life. Rannebarger, 43, wasn't dying: He was cut, bruised and had chipped a bone in his right leg, but it turned out he wasn't having a heart attack. He would have survived either way.

But the stranger, a 55-year-old trucker and retired Navy man, kept the panic from grabbing hold of him. John Reddington woke Rannebarger from his nightmare.

In the minutes before he met Reddington, Rannebarger was still grasping the guardrail, trying to fathom what was happening. He could hear the crunch of metal in the distance as cars kept hitting each other. He heard moans. It was, he said, "hell on earth."

He was disoriented. He couldn't figure out where he was; it was a stretch of road he used every day, but nothing about it was familiar.

He couldn't catch his breath, and he was so dazed he didn't realize his pants had split open in the crash and were lying in the grass at his feet. When he grabbed them and looked up, he saw what he was desperate for — a pocket of clean air. It was inside the cab of the tractor-trailer that had slammed its brakes and slid right up to his back bumper.

Putting his weight on one leg, he got himself over to the truck and knocked on the passenger-side door.

Reddington, whose friends call him J.R., remembers seeing Rannebarger for the first time. "He didn't look too well," he recalled, using the same even, gravelly tone that Rannebarger found so soothing.

With Rannebarger in the cab, Reddington handed him a bottle of water from his cooler. Still, his new passenger was anxious and struggling for air.

They were in a world of their own up there. Headlights illuminated nothing; smoke filled the air around the cab and threw the light back at them. There was something else that was eerie. Reddington realized that across the median, in the eastbound lanes, there was no traffic.

They strained to hear a siren or a helicopter. They had no way of knowing there was a fiery, 43-car pileup in the eastbound lanes 200 yards away.

This rural piece of I-4 is a stretch Reddington knows well. He grinds out his shift every night, starting at 11, by driving a trailer full of carpet from Orlando to Sarasota, then back to Orlando. There he picks up another loaded trailer, hauls it to Tampa and returns to Orlando about 9 a.m. He crosses this patch four times a night.

He remembers that on this night, before smoke covered the road, he could see stars. It was good driving.

There is another thing that sticks in his mind, too: He was carrying only about 6,000 pounds, a light load. Much more weight, and his rig would have mowed right over Rannebarger's Mazda.

Reddington downplays what he did for Rannebarger. His instincts told him he was hurt and needed a calm voice. They talked about trucking. Baseball. Their wives. They talked about radio. Reddington, usually a satellite radio devotee, tuned into Rannebarger's station, 98.3 FM.

As Rannebarger breathed more easily, Reddington started to climb down from the cab. "I'll be right out front," he told his charge. "You can see my flashlight."

With his Maglite, Reddington finally could see the cars around them. About a dozen in all, pushed into each other, with at least 20 people inside or wandering the pavement and shoulder. They, too, were banged up, dazed and didn't know what to do. None had life-threatening injuries.

Reddington quietly took over the scene, going from one person to the next and asking if they were hurt. He took a notebook from his truck and wrote down their insurance information and phone numbers, so they could exchange them.

When light finally came, he began looking under vehicles to check for leaking fuel. He worried that one of the anxious drivers would light a cigarette.

As the fog began to fade hours later, a sheriff's deputy walked out of the smoke. Reddington told him who was hurt.

Rannebarger, overhearing the conversations and seeing Reddington's calm reserve, marveled at the order he brought to the surreal scene. The trucker checked on the DJ regularly as the group waited.

"He was the calm voice of reason in what could have been just a melee, just sheer panic," Rannebarger said. "I credit him with keeping everything quiet and under control."

Their wreck happened about 6 a.m. Three and a half hours passed before an ambulance came for Rannebarger. He was still in Reddington's cab.

The next week, he wrote a letter to Reddington's bosses at Shaw Industries in Dalton, Ga. He wanted them to know how much one of their drivers had helped him.

When reporters called, Rannebarger mostly talked about Reddington. A stranger had gone out of his way, he said.

Reddington is surprised by the attention. His life experience, including working the radio on Navy aircraft carriers off of Vietnam, helps keep things in perspective. He hasn't forgotten about the DJ he met. He sometimes tunes in to his show to help pass the last hours of his shift.

Rannebarger knows Reddington wants to put it behind him. He doesn't try to contact him.

They still share that stretch of I-4 near mile marker 48, though, and Rannebarger is pretty sure he passed a familiar truck one morning a few weeks ago.

As he exited, he honked his horn, rolled down the window and waved.

Reporter Gretchen Parker can be reached at gparker@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7562.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT