By April Kemick
London Free Press
Copyright 2007 Sun Media Corporation
All Rights Reserved
LONDON — An 18-year-old girl had to be cut from a car and rushed to hospital yesterday after a mid-day London collision with a fire truck in the downtown.
Witnesses said the girl was driving south on Waterloo Street when the car and fire truck collided.
The truck had been heading east on King Street.
“It was a crazy impact,” said Merissa Caskenette, 24, who watched in horror as the fire truck punctured the passenger side of the four-door sedan.
“My heart sank into my stomach. All I could think of was, ‘Oh my God, the driver,’ ” she said.
The crash sent the two vehicles careening more than 15 metres away from the centre of the intersection, before they came to rest on the King Street sidewalk after narrowly missing a traffic light pole.
The fire truck crushed the passenger side of the sedan, crumpling the door inward, shattering the windshield and setting off the car’s airbags.
Four firefighters in the truck --it had been returning to the central fire station at Colborne Street and Hamilton Road after a call -- rushed to help the car’s young female driver, Caskenette said.
But the 18-year-old, the only person in the car, was trapped.
“She had blood all over her face and she couldn’t get out,” Caskenette said.
A different team of firefighters arrived to cut the girl out of the car. She was rushed to Victoria Hospital with what paramedics called non-life-threatening injuries.
The driver of the fire truck was assessed by paramedics, but none of the four firefighters were hurt in the crash, said Deputy Chief Dave Kitterman.
“They are OK, they’re just very shaken up,” he said.
“Our main concern is with the victim in the car.”
While witnesses said the fire truck was driving with its lights on but no sirens at the time, Kitterman said that would contradict procedure.
Firefighters returning to stations are not to have lights on or sirens flashing, or both, he said.
Kitterman said the truck’s lights and sirens had just been turned off, the crew preparing to return to the station at the time.
Calling it “very rare,” he said he couldn’t recall the last time a fire truck collided with a vehicle. Police are investigating the collision.