LEAWOOD, Kan. – New video released on Thursday captures a driver’s eight-mile journey under a semi-trailer.
The video is from an early Wednesday morning. A driver slid under a semi-truck and then was struck underneath it several miles along Interstate 435.
Getting someone out of a car stuck under a semi trailer isn’t all that unusual. Firefighters say it happens more than you think.
When rescue teams saw the Kia compact car wedged under the trailer of a large semi-trailer on Wednesday morning, they knew immediately that this was no ordinary accident.
“It was a little difficult to piece together what had happened,” said Sean Brooks, chief of the Olathe Fire Department. “We knew something wasn’t quite right. But again she had been through such a traumatic event up to that point, she wasn’t exactly able to tell us until we could get her out, what had happened.
The 28-year-old Kansas City woman told Brooks she crashed into the trailer of the truck and was trapped under it between I-435 and the State Line Road, about 8 miles from where crews rescue now they were using special equipment to cut the door. her to her car and get her out.
The radio transmission recorded by Broadcastify brought rescue teams with special extrication tools to the scene after other drivers called 911 to alert police that the car was being pulled along the highway shortly after 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Brooks says the firefighters’ only goal was to free a trapped woman, even if they didn’t really understand how she got there.
“The amount of snow that was inside the vehicle where the windows had blown out from its 8 mile journey down the road and how cold it is like her, all of these things, we were able to figure that out later,” he said. she said.
Brooks calls it extraordinary that no one was seriously injured, especially since the car’s roofline had partially collapsed and the vehicle could have pulled free of the trailer as it was being pulled at highway speeds.
Firefighters say they weren’t surprised that the driver of the truck never acknowledged he was in an accident because slippery conditions on the sidewalk that morning dramatically reduced the amount of friction dragging a car would normally generate.
