DAVIESS CO., KY (WFIE) -
Two crash victims recovering are Wednesday night after a head-on collision in
Daviess County. It happened just before noon at the intersection of Highway 54
and Chambers.
It's a story of someone being in the right place at the right time and
knowing exactly what to do. Just before noon, state police say the driver of a
semi swerved to avoid hitting two vehicles, but ended up colliding head-on with
a truck.
"I was afraid we were going to have something really bad in there," said
Lewis Nall.
Nall was just three cars behind a white Toyota pick-up truck moments before
it and the semi hit head-on.
"The white truck caught on fire pretty much immediately," Nall said.
With flames shooting out of the truck, Nall says he could see there were two
men inside.
"I just ran over there and tried to help them out of the truck," Nall
said.
the two men, Alvin and Jerry Tindall, were able to get out but getting that
fire out was much more of a challenge.
"The guy in the tractor trailer gave me a fire extinguisher, he was looking
for another one. We tried to get it put out and it wasn't going out," Nall
said.
Ironically, firefighters inside a Daviess County fire truck that was on its
was back to the station saw the smoke.
"We were here within 20 to 15 seconds of seeing it and the fire had already
erupted up through the dash," said Jeremy Smith with Daviess County Fire
Department.
As the fire grew larger, so did the concern of it spreading.
"You had the fear with the semi and everything being involved and spreading
to the semi, of course catching the grass and things on fire," Smith said.
Firefighters were able to get the fire under control and put out before it
spread. The two men inside that truck were taken to the hospital with minor
injuries.
"I think if those guys hadn't had their seatbelt on, even with the airbags in
there, it would have been a far different story," Nall said.
State police say the driver of the semi is 44-year-old Ryan Lemke of
Wisconsin. He was not hurt.
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