By Julia Reischel
Watershed Post
SHANDAKEN — On Sunday afternoon, Jesse Cowan was on duty as the driver of the ambulance for the Shandaken Ambulance Service. When a call came in about an accident on Route 28 at an intersection near the Emerson Resort, Cowan felt a twinge of anxiety. The accident was a head-on collision -- and Cowan’s wife and four children were supposed to be driving on Route 28 that very afternoon.
“I looked at my EMT sitting next to me and said to him, ‘Oh my god, my wife and kids were on their way home from Kingston,” Cowan told the Watershed Post. “I was just like, ‘Wow, I hope not.’”
Cowan, a 29-year-old heavy equipment operator for the town of Shandaken Highway Department, has been a volunteer firefighter for 12 years, but only began working for the Shandaken Ambulance service in the last year. Two of his four children are under the age of five. Cowan said that finding your family at the scene of an accident is a first responder’s “worst nightmare ever.”
Full story: Ambulance driver responds to Route 28 accident involving his own family