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Out Of I-4 Crash Comes Human Kindness

Staff photo by KATHY MOORE (2008)

Sam Spadavecchia is recovering from injuries he sustained while he was pinned in his red truck underneath a semi-truck January 9, 2008, on I-4. He had a dream a week or so earlier that he died in a fire on I-4.

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By LINDSAY PETERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 16, 2008

The first thing Sam Spadavecchia sees after slamming into the back of the cargo truck is the man at his window.

The front of Spadavecchia's pickup is jammed underneath the truck's rear end. The steering wheel presses so hard against his chest that he can hardly breathe. The crumpled dashboard smashes down on his right leg, nearly crushing his foot under the brake pedal.

"Get me out," he begs.

The man disappears, then reappears. It's bad up ahead, he tells Spadavecchia. They can both see the trucks on fire. "But you're all right."

Nearly six weeks after the 70-car pileup on Interstate 4, Spadavecchia, 61, sits in a wheelchair in the living room of his doublewide home in Polk County. He wears a cast on his lower right leg and ankle. His arm is wrapped and stapled where doctors pinned together shattered bones.

He looks down and rubs his hand over his graying beard, his cheeks, his forehead. He shields his eyes, red from tears that keep coming back with the memories of that morning. The memories are still so sharp, at times they take his breath away.

But he's all right, he says, a tearful gratitude tightening his throat. He'll be OK because of the firefighters, the paramedics, the deputies and the other people in the crash with him who rushed to help.

They saved him physically and emotionally, fighting against time, against a spreading, consuming fire, against the air itself, so thick with fog and smoke that the people it enveloped might as well have been blindfolded.

"That was a war. It looked like a war zone," he says.

But if combat breeds heroes, as it did that day in Spadavecchia's opinion, it also leaves scars.

Polk County Fire Rescue Lt. Colin Fredericks knows war. He was in the Mideast, including Iraq, from January 2002 to February 2004, in the Army infantry. But this was something else, in a way much worse, he says.

War is inherently hostile, but "this is the United States of America, and you're supposed to be able to help people," he says, trying to describe what he went through that day. "You don't see stuff like this."

"WE HEAR IT, BUT WE CAN'T FIND IT. … I'M HAVING TO WALK NEXT TO THE [FIRE]TRUCK."

Fredericks, 32, has been awake for nearly 24 hours when he and his Polk County Fire Rescue team are called to a small wreck on I-4 a little after 4 a.m. They spent the day before fighting a burn that had gotten out of hand near their station in Polk City. That night, they answered a series of emergency calls.

It is warm and clear when they arrive and begin treating an injured motorist. While they're loading the patient into their ambulance, they hear crashes down the road, less than a mile west.

Suddenly, Fredericks feels a chill. Then it surrounds him, a soupy thick fog that leaves him standing virtually alone, unable to see his men, their ambulance or their fire engine.

They hear the radio calls. They answer that they're on their way in the fire engine. But the fog is so thick, they can't see where they are going. They hear more crashing and explosions.

"Have FHP shut down I-4. … I can't see my hand in front of my face," Fredericks calls on the radio a little after 5:15 a.m. "There's zero visibility and multiple accidents out here."

At 5:32, Fredericks reports I-4 traffic is at a standstill. "Gotta be a wreck in front of us." But he and his crew can't find it. The fire engine driver can't even see his bumper from the driver's seat.

At 5:37: "We hear it, but we can't find it. … I'm having to walk next to the [fire]truck."

By now the radio is busy with calls from dispatchers and other emergency responders. "Oil tanker overturned … semi overturned with entrapment … people screaming and yelling."

But Fredericks and his men with the fire engine can move only as fast as Fredericks can slide his feet along the pavement as he strains to keep sight of the white line on the highway.

He and a firefighter walking with him put on headlamps, with a red light on the back, the only thing allowing the engine driver to see them on the road ahead. The head gear was a Christmas gift from a fellow emergency services worker.

As the crew creeps west toward the scene, a battalion chief tells other rescue workers to stay back. The visibility is so low, it's too dangerous on that stretch of I-4, where the interstate dips into a little valley between Lakeland and Lake Alfred.

He and the other commanders have no idea what's less than a mile ahead.

"I HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. I HAVE TO GO HELP HIM."

In the eastbound lane of I-4 about 5:25, dozens of cars and trucks lie in a tangled line of crumpled metal at least a quarter-mile long. Fire burns a semi-tractor-trailer and is rolling fast toward the vehicles behind it.

The drivers and passengers who are able jump out and stumble forward, not knowing what has happened or where they are. Many cry out for help, their limbs broken and bleeding, some with cracked skulls, others gasping for breath in panic.

It's dark. The fog is so heavy they can't see what's in front of them until they bump into it.

But they can hear. Many near the front of the pileup turn toward the searing screams of a man they cannot see who is burning to death.

Spadavecchia hears it and thinks, "I have to do something. I have to go help him." But his truck is smashed into the back of a cargo truck and his door won't open. He begins to yell for help.

He sees the man at his side. And soon a group of five or six men are pulling and banging on his door. They grab a crowbar from the back of his red, S-10 Chevrolet pickup and begin prying and pounding. Still the door won't budge.

They try to find other tools, but they can't see. Someone finds a spotlight, also in the back of Spadavecchia's truck with the tools from his job. He constructs convention booths.

One of the men finds a bigger crowbar, and they take turns prying at Spadavecchia's door. One by one, they work awhile and rest for a few minutes. They pry and pound, trying to weaken the pin that had lodged into its latch.

One Hispanic man won't give up. Again and again, he pushes with all his weight against the pry bar. "I'm gonna get you outta there, Papi. Don't worry. I'm gonna get you out," he says.

It takes nearly an hour, but finally, the door flies open, swinging wide on its hinges. Sam lifts his left leg, but his right leg won't move. It is stuck under the smashed dashboard.

"IF I DON'T GET SOMEWHERE WITH THESE FIRES, I'M GOING TO LOSE SOME PEOPLE."

Fredericks and his men finally find the largest pileup — involving 43 vehicles — having taken more than an hour to travel one mile.

"I am on scene," Fredericks calls at 6:02 a.m., breathing hard after doing a quick survey of the situation. It's worse than he had imagined. "Ten cars with entrapment. Overturned semi fully involved."

Fredericks knows he has injured people to tend to, but the ground is covered with oil, and flames are roaring around him. "We're going to try to attack this fire," he calls, asking for reinforcements. Five minutes later, he calls again, and again a few minutes after that. "We need to do mass casualty."

Fredericks' fire engine carries 750 gallons of water, and he knows it won't outlast the fire, which has marched down the twisted row of vehicles and now threatens the tractor-trailer in front of Spadavecchia's pickup.

"If I don't get somewhere with these fires, I'm going to lose some people," Fredericks calls at 6:24. Within five minutes, he's out of water. In three more minutes, flames engulf the tractor-trailer ahead of Spadavecchia.

The firefighters run toward him. Fredericks carries the Jaws of Life, the cutters and hydraulic tools that can push a crumpled dashboard away from a trapped victim. One good thing: The passenger door is already open.

The firefighters ready the tools, and Fredericks calls again for help. "I got a man fixing to be burned up." Another firefighter responds. "I got two tankers headed in your direction, if we can just get through."

Fredericks' men cut the steering wheel and position their device, called a ram, on the door sill. It works like a jack. They hope to push Spadavecchia's dashboard up and off his lap, but it doesn't push far enough. His foot is still stuck.

A firefighter climbs into the cab and leans on Spadavecchia's lap to quickly reposition a shorter ram on the floorboard between his legs. "Tell me if this hurts," the firefighter says.

Spadavecchia tries to stay calm, using his humor to fight the fear he sees in everyone's faces. "Hell, I'll just punch you," he says.

The compressor rumbles. The ram pushes. Fredricks repeats his plea for more water.

Then, at 6:48, about 45 minutes after he found Spadavecchia, he calls again. "My victim has been extricated."

"WHERE DOES THIS END?"

Polk County paramedic Jim Bialkoski has been hearing the emergency calls and trying to get to Fredericks' scene for nearly an hour, spending most of that time walking the interstate in front of his rescue truck because the driver can't see the road.

Reaching the crashes, he hears the roar of fire but can't see anything. He steps forward about 10 paces, and there it is, at least 1,000 yards of flaming wreckage.

Fredericks and his crew are up ahead, having just freed Spadavecchia. Bialkoski and his partner pile a stretcher with supplies and begin winding their way forward.

They check every vehicle they can, peering in, the white lights of their headlamps penetrating about two feet into the gauzy air, then dissolving into a flat grayish white.

The first person they find is Spadavecchia, on the ground away from the fire, strapped onto a board to secure his spine. Bialkoski checks his pulse. He can see by Spadavecchia's expression that he's in a lot of pain. But he's stable.

Fredericks and his crew have moved on to the next entrapment. Bialkoski has to move on, too.

Ordinarily, this is the kind of patient Bialkoski would dedicate all his time to. But he has no idea how many more people are hurt up ahead, possibly dying, trapped in their cars or trucks.

At least Spadavecchia isn't by himself. A man is sitting with him and says he will stay until an ambulance comes.

As Bialkoski moves through the thick fog, people appear in front of him, seemingly out of nowhere.

"I can't breathe."

"My arm is broken."

"I'm bleeding."

He hands out paper dust masks and bandages. He tries to group people together. But he has no idea where to tell them to go. Fire rages behind him and, for all he knows, ahead of him, too.

"There was no safe place," he recalls later.

He meets up with Fredericks' men to help with a man trapped in the passenger side of a pickup. His leg is badly broken. When they lift the man out, Bialkoski hears a scream like he has never heard before.

They find another man trapped in a crushed car. But there's nothing they can do. Bialkoski knows cars, but he can't even identify what model this one is, it's so smashed and hidden beneath a toppled truck.

All he can see is the man's forearm. All he can tell the man is that they have to get more help to get him out.

As he moves on, he keeps thinking about Spadavecchia, wanting to go back to make sure he's still all right. But more wreckage lies ahead.

He's oblivious to the passing of time. One minute the world around him is all black. The next, it seems, it's all white. The sun is in the sky above, but from the ground, it's no brighter than a flashlight.

He wonders, "Where does this end?"

"BUT HE WAS WORRIED ABOUT ME. I WAS WORRIED ABOUT HIM. WE WERE ALL WORRIED ABOUT EACH OTHER."

Spadavecchia waits for an ambulance but not alone. A man he knows only as Duke stays with him, talking, keeping him distracted. The two men talk about their kids, their work, what they do in their free time. They become, Spadavecchia says later, "crash buddies."

A small group of people has collected around Spadavecchia, including about four others, the "walking wounded," the rescue workers call them.

Spadavecchia is especially worried about a man with a baseball-size knot on the side of his head. "I kept telling the rescue workers they needed to see about him," Spadavecchia says later. "But he was worried about me. I was worried about him. We were all worried about each other."

About 7:15 a.m., nearly two hours after Spadavecchia crashed into the back of the truck, he hears an ambulance siren drawing near. Soon he is on his way to the lot of Richie Bros. auction house a few miles away, where a landing zone will be set up for a helicopter to take him to Lakeland Regional Medical Center.

He loses focus after that, until later that morning when he sees his wife, Judith, and son, Jason, walking into his hospital room.

"That's when I felt the best that day," he says later, through tears.

"YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN HELPLESSNESS."

Claude Walker gets the call from the Polk County Sheriff's Office about 6 a.m., and by about 8, he's at the scene.

A volunteer chaplain for the sheriff's office, he moves among the hundreds of people stuck in their cars behind the wrecks. They're closed in by the fog and smoke. The feeling he describes later is "an eerie calm of fear."

Many people are impatient to leave. Others, the ones closer to the front, are still frightened, not knowing what is happening, even hours after the crashing has stopped.

He prays with the ones who want to and writes down their first names so he can pray for them later.

Finally, about 10, he makes it to the front of the wreckage. He walks past the remains of burnt cars and trucks and gives that spot a name. "The Pit."

Extra water had arrived not long after Fredericks' men got Spadavecchia out of his truck, which wasn't burned. But firefighters are still trying to put out persistent flames. Others sit where they can, their energy spent. Only one victim remains to be rescued, and workers with heavy equipment are getting it done, reassuring the others at the scene that he will survive.

As the firefighters rest, Walker asks whether they want to talk, and he searches their faces for signs that they need help emotionally.

Some do. "Those guys from Polk City, this was tough on them," he says later. They didn't have the equipment they needed. They couldn't see where they were or what was ahead of them.

Many of the people at the scene tell Walker they want to forget the sounds in their heads, the crashes and the screams, and the feeling they didn't do enough. "There was a lot of helplessness," the chaplain says.

"You can't explain helplessness."

"YOU JUST GO ON AUTOPILOT. YOU JUST START REACTING, YOU REALLY CAN'T EVEN STOP TO THINK."

In this accident, the rule book went out the window, firefighters and paramedics say. Nothing in their training or years of experience prepared them for what they faced on that stretch of highway. By the end of the day Jan. 9, officials were reporting that 70 cars had slammed into each other on both the eastbound and westbound lanes of I-4. Five people were killed, and at least 38 were hurt.

Agencies from Orlando to Hillsborough County sent firefighters and rescue workers. It took them more than eight hours to find all the victims and put out the fires.

"You just go on autopilot. You just start reacting, you really can't even stop to think," Bialkoski says later at his Polk City station. Some of the guys keep asking themselves if they could have done something more, he says, but "you can't do that. We all did everything we could."

Spadavecchia takes a small measure of comfort in one thing. He had a dolly in the back of his truck, and after the firefighters freed him, he gave it to them so they wouldn't have to lug around the compressor for the Jaws of Life, which they used several more times.

He also gave a group of men his spotlight to try to find other people who needed help.

"That's what hurt me so bad out there, that I couldn't do anything to help. … I gave them my stuff. Maybe that counts for something," he says.

But it doesn't really feel like it, not compared with the help he got from so many people.

He lists them: Duke and the other people who rushed to his truck, the deputies who checked on him while he waited to be freed, the firefighters, the paramedics, all the other rescue workers.

He lowers his head and begins to cry. "I thought I was going to die out there," he says. "But I didn't, I had those guys and they helped me fight."

Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at (813) 259-7834 or lpeterson@tampatrib.com.

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