GREENE – Three men pulled a trapped dump truck driver from a burning wreck along State Highway 206 in the Town of Greene Wednesday after the ten-wheeler rolled down a steep embankment, landed on its cabin roof and burst into flames.
New York State Police reported at around 3:32 p.m. Wednesday, an Oxford man was traveling along 206 in the Town of Greene near the intersection of Quinn Road when he served to avoid an animal in the roadway and lost control of his dump truck.
The driver is not being identified by police, pending their investigation into the incident.
He was extracted from his burning vehicle by passing motorists and taken to Wilson Regional Medical Center in Binghamton before being transported to SUNY Upstate Medical University at Syracuse for burn treatments.
His condition was unknown Thursday morning, but emergency crews at the scene said he was speaking to responders and walking before being taken away by ambulance. He suffered burns and other injuries during the incident.
State Police reported the vehicle struck a guardrail and was sent tumbling end over end down a 45-degree embankment before coming to a rest on its roof, about 40 feet from the roadway.
Jonathan Tokos was in the oncoming lane when the accident occurred right in front of him.
Tokos was heading home in his Tri Cities Temperature Control van when he saw the dump truck swerve onto his side of the road.
“The dump truck came into my lane after he lost control. I slammed on my brakes and skidded over to side of the road. He over-corrected and went end over end down the embankment. He hit the guard rail and he went straight down the hill,” said Tokos.
Tokos got out of his vehicle and attempted to call 911 from his cell phone, but struggled to find service and was forced to pace up along the road to make the call.
“I got a hold of 911 and was trying to tell them where the accident was when someone else came running out of a house nearby screaming ‘It’s on fire it’s on fire.’ I had to tell the operator I needed to go and I hung up and went to get the fire extinguisher from my van,” he said.
Greene residents George Austin and Dustin Turner also came to the trapped driver’s aid as fire consumed the engine block and spread to the passenger side of the vehicle.
“When I came over 206, I could see smoke from a fire a couple hills away and thought it was a house fire,” Austin said. “I pulled up and they were hollering for a fire extinguisher and I threw mine out to them. I pulled over on shoulder of road and they were screaming, ‘A guy’s trapped and his truck is on fire.’”
“I saw it was becoming engulfed. We had to get that guy out of there. One man was already there trying to get him out and I figured we had to get him out of the truck even if it meant getting a little burned ourselves, so I ran down,” said Austin.
Austin ran down and joined Turner in his efforts to free the victim. As Tokos worked to suppress the flames with his extinguisher, Turner and Austin tried to pull the man through the windshield.
Tokos used up his extinguisher and the fire again began to engulf the truck. He ran back to his vehicle and retrieved a second fire extinguisher and again exhausted it, temporarily slowing the flames.
“He (the driver) was screaming ‘Get me out of here, get me out of here. It’s getting hot,’ so I doused him with the fire extinguisher. I tried putting the flames out again around the cab, but it ran out again and he was still stuck, so I started throwing dirt on the fire,” said Tokos. “It started spreading again real fast and became engulfed.”
Tokos took the last fire extinguisher from Austin and again suppressed the fire in the immediate area of the victim.
Tokos admitted he was starting to feel the situation getting desperate and after the third and last extinguisher ran empty, he ran back to his truck to get a saw.
“It was pretty scary. It was like nothing I’d seen before. I thought I was going to have to watch a man burn to death in front of me. I just wanted to suppress the fire. I ran back to the truck to get a saw. I was worried we might have to cut his leg off if we couldn’t get him out soon,” he said.
A few moments later the men pulled the victim from the fire. Tokos said the entire event lasted less than five minutes. Thirty seconds after they pulled the man out, the entire truck was destroyed by fire.
“If it wasn’t for my company mandating those extinguishers, I’m positive he would have burned to death,” Tokos said. “30 seconds earlier, and he would have hit me head on. 30 seconds later, and I never would have seen him. It’s amazing how God works.”