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No Training Could Prepare Them For I-4 Scene, Polk Fireman Says

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By BILLY TOWNSEND, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 11, 2008

Updated: 01/11/2008 12:11 am

Tony Crouse tries not to learn too much about the people he helps on the job. He doesn't ask about families or hobbies or aspirations. A professional distance helps the Polk County deputy fire chief leave the job behind each night.

So he's a little surprised that the first name of one injured man has stuck with him.

The man spent nearly six hours trapped beneath an overturned Kane's Furniture truck in the 43-vehicle conflagration at the center of Wednesday morning's Interstate 4 disaster.

Crouse, 41, talked with the man while special-operations fire rescue crews from four agencies worked to free him.

He finally was cut out of the debris about 10:30 a.m. Fire and police officials have said the man likely will live, but his name has not been released.

Rescue workers said they admired the man's fortitude in holding out for more than five hours without losing consciousness.

Crouse, who has worked 23 years with the Polk fire department, said the man kept his sense of humor as rescue workers swarmed around him and kept him talking.

"One of the other chiefs asked, 'Are you still with us?'" Crouse said.

The man answered, "Where am I going?"

As deputy chief of the fire department, Crouse sleeps at home each night rather than at a station. He responded from his Auburndale house Wednesday morning, taking State Road 559 north to I-4.

To access the crash site from the west, Crouse said he drove a fire department vehicle east on the edge of the westbound lanes, which were only slightly damaged and less obstructed by wreckage.

When he hit the wall of smoke and fog that obscured the sprawling crash scene, he poked his head out the window to see while he drove. He crawled along, following the white line on the edge of the road.

Occasionally, the fog lights on his truck appeared to form their own lines in the murk, complicating the drive. He called it scary and confusing.

Crouse eventually reached a spot where other firefighters had set up. They began to ferry rescue equipment from the westbound lanes, across a high-tension, three-wire fence in the median and to the crash scenes. They brought extrication equipment, blowtorches, air bottles and other special rescue gear.

How dark were the conditions? The burning tractor-trailers were yards away to the east, but Crouse and other responders couldn't see the flames.

A group of emergency workers, including Crouse, worked to remove a pickup embedded in the back of a semitrailer.

They succeeded once a nearby trucker with a chain gave them the keys to his rig and allowed them to pull the pickup free.

Rescue workers from Osceola County worked their way in from the east, while rescue workers from Lakeland and Hillsborough County moved in from the west.

Polk officers worked their way in from both sides.

Crouse said there is no professional training for working blind.

"That's something new."

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