Off-Duty Indiana Firefighters save Woman in Burning Car

LEBANON – A scheduling snafu put two off-duty Michiana area firefighters in the right place at the right time and as a result, a 30-year-old woman’s life was saved.

South Bend Fire Captain Darrell Eiler and Rochester firefighter Kraig Smith pulled a woman from her burning car Thursday following the car’s head-on collision with a tractor-trailer on Indiana 23 near Lebanon.

“I guess our training took over and we did what we knew had to be done. It speaks volumes for our training” Eiler said Sunday.

The off-duty firefighters were traveling together, on their way to a meeting in Lebanon they thought was scheduled for Thursday — but the meeting was held on Wednesday. Smith said he put the meeting on the wrong day on his calendar.

“It may have been the wrong day for us, but it was the right day for the woman in that car,” Smith said Sunday.

Eiler and Smith were headed west on Indiana 23 when they witnessed the collision between the westbound car and the eastbound tractor-trailer several car lengths in front of them at about 12:45 p.m.

The impact of the collision sent the car rolling into a nearby field, Eiler said. Heavy grayish-black smoking wafted out from the engine area of the car. Eiler told Smith to go to the tractor-trailer and that he would go to the car.

As Smith walked over to the tractor-trailer, he saw the tractor-trailer driver climbing out of the roadside ditch and onto the pavement, Smith said. The driver, Roger Hicks, and Smith hurried to the car and Eiler.

“I saw the smoke from the car getting thicker and darker, and I’m thinking: ‘We’ve got to get her out of the car because this thing is gonna go up in flames’,” Smith recalled.

Eiler was thinking the same thing, he said.

“There was a small fire in the engine area of her car, and that fire was building up,” Eiler said. “I was watching this fire from the corner of my eye and I told her (the driver of the car) that we have to get out of here. She said she couldn’t because her legs hurt. She said her foot was stuck.”

After Eiler aggressively urged the woman to try to move, she managed to push herself up onto the console between the driver and passenger seats. Eiler and, Smith pulled the woman out of the car through the sunroof.

The two off-duty firefighters and the driver of the tractor-trailer carried the woman a safe distance away from the burning vehicle — which became engulfed in flames shortly after the rescue. But before the fire consumed the car, Eiler asked the driver if anyone else was in the car.

“She said ‘no,’ but she was very lethargic, so I went back to check. With all of the smoke and deployed airbags and everything, I couldn’t tell,” Eiler said. “We found out later that there wasn’t anyone else in there.”

Smith said he doesn’t see himself as a hero.

“I don’t think we did anything that other people wouldn’t do if put in that situation,” he added. “We saw something that needed to be done and we did it. We had to get her out of the car, or she would’ve died.”

Someone called 911 at 12:42 p.m. according to Boone County Sheriff’s Department.

State police, plus police and fire teams from several departments in the Lebanon area assisted on the scene. The crash remains under investigation by the Boone County Sheriff’s Department.

According to police, the woman is expected to make a full recovery.