TWO KANE COUNTY, ILLINOIS, FIREFIGHTERS had to be transported Sunday afternoon following a collision between their fire engine and a utility pole in Hampshire.
The truck was on a training drive along a 2-lane road when, after cresting a hill, they came across a pickup truck that was stopped on the roadway. The driver of the fire engine swerved to avoid colliding with the pickup, but he left the roadway and ran into the pole.
The Arlington Heights Daily Herald tells in the STORY:
(The driver of the 1986 Mack fire engine) was taken to Provena St. Joseph Hospital in Elgin with minor injuries. His passenger, 50-year-old Rick Heine of Hampshire, was extricated from the fire truck and was taken by Flight for Life helicopter to OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford for treatment of injuries that weren’t considered life-threatening, police said.
The Chicago Sun-Times describes the accident:
(Police Lt.) Gengler said the crash was precipitated by a pickup truck driven by John R. Hanson, 74, of Hampshire. Hanson also had been eastbound along Kelley. But seeing someone he knew at the roadside to his left, Gengler said, Hanson stopped the pickup, turned it diagonally across the roadway and leaned out the truck’s window to talk to his friend.
Gengler said that as the fire engine crested a hill that blocked long-range vision, Becker, at the wheel of the fire engine, suddenly saw the pickup truck part-way across the road in front of him. Becker steered the engine partly onto the right shoulder to avoid the pickup, “but there was really no shoulder there, just a dropoff,” Gengler said. “He lost control and hit a pole. It’s a wonder the fire engine didn’t roll over.”
The collision smashed in the front of the pumper, one of only two owned by the FD. Fire officials say that it is probably totalled.
The 74-yr.-old man in the pickup truck was cited for illegally parking in the roadway.
Read the full story in the Sun-Times HERE.
Hat tip to Tom P.
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