Burning Man

Helpless in Houston

Warning: there are some graphic descriptions of trauma in this story.

When I was a paramedic in Fort Bend County, Texas, we rode as a two-person unit. The only hospital within our jurisdiction was a small community hospital, so more severely ill or injured patients had to be transported to Houston, adjacent to our county. Mike and I were partners for that 24-hour shift at a busier station. Mike is funny, always cracking jokes, and I am fond of saying he never returned my left-handed baseball glove when he borrowed it once for a softball game!

This evening, we were putting the ambulance back together at the hospital in southwest Houston. We heard a loud bang as we got in the vehicle. We looked down the road to see a pickup truck lying on its side, having snapped off a telephone pole. We jumped in the ambulance and got to the scene very quickly.

As we were about to get out of the ambulance, the wires overhead snapped. With a bright flash like lightning and a deafening crack, the hot wires fell next to us and across the wrecked vehicle. The pickup began to catch on fire from underneath. As we got closer, we could see the driver still in the driver's seat. The truck lay on the driver's side with the windshield partially broken out. Inside, I could see him doing what looked like one-armed push-ups trying to disentangle himself from the truck. Mike got a fire extinguisher, and as we approached the wreck, it was clear that the downed power lines were lying across it. I thought we had to do something, so I used the back of my right hand to tap the truck's metal. I decided if it were electrically hot, I would burn the back of my non-dominant hand, which would be "better." Fortunately, I did not get shocked or burned.

We could see that the fire was encroaching on the engine compartment, and the man struggled to undo his feet. I kicked out the windshield and reached in to grab the man. He was a big guy, and I was not. I told him to pull his legs out, but he kept doing the one-arm push-ups, trying to disentangle himself, and would not look at me. The fire began to creep into the passenger compartment, and I saw yellow light flicker beneath his dashboard. I tried to reach in and grab his leg to pull it up and over the steering wheel, but it was stuck. The man began to yell and scream as the fire started to heat the footwells of the truck. I was desperate to do anything to get him out by this time. Another person and I grabbed his arms and tried to break his legs, feeling that if I snapped his femurs, I could slide him out of the slot between the seat and steering wheel, even if his knees didn't bend in that direction. It didn't work. No matter how hard I yanked and pulled, his legs wouldn't snap. By now, the fire had begun to extend into the passenger compartment, and I could see flames under the dashboard. I could also hear the live electrical wires snapping and popping beside us. Maybe, I thought, if I lifted him over the passenger side of the steering wheel, I could roll him out that way, but he was too big. I tried until the heat became unbearable, and I made no progress in saving this man's life. Only one person had come to help us, and I realized it was futile. Our fire extinguisher was empty, no fire apparatus had yet arrived, and we could not stop the flames or get him out.

As the flames engulfed the passenger compartment, he was now with his head and arms outside the windshield, as far as I could pull him. He began doing the one-arm push-ups again, trying to get out, and he continued to do those while the flames enveloped his body. We could do nothing but watch him burn to death.

In those days, there was no post-traumatic stress disorder, critical incident debriefing, or downtime to recover from a critical event. We just had to go back to work. That incident affected me more than almost any incident in my career because of a sense of absolute frustration at being unable to help a man that I thought could have been saved if we had the tools and the people to do it. But when he needed help, we were the only tools and persons trying to rescue him, and we just couldn't. As with all good men and emergency responders in those days, I just pushed it down inside me and pretended it was okay. Later, as it nagged at me, I needed an outlet for my nightmarish recollection of that incident. I decided to draw some pictures of what I saw. I am not a good artist and could not capture what it was like. It was somehow cathartic, anyway. It didn't make anything go away, but it gave me an outlet to recall it in a calm, orderly fashion. I began to come to grips with the realization that there was nothing I could do, no matter what. From the moment he lost control of his pickup truck, he was doomed. I never found out what caused the accident or learned his name.

I relived the incident a few days later when I discovered that a news crew was across the street filming a segment and saw the accident. Their video began about when I had to give up and back out. The footage showed the man's last efforts to extricate himself with his one-handed push-ups. It was horrifying to see it again. I watched it over and over, trying to see if there was something that I could have done. If I were a massive weightlifting brute, I could lift him out or break his thighs. In reality, I could have done nothing more to save him without several fire extinguishers and a lot more time. Sadly, that video was accidentally recorded over and lost forever. That could be good, but maybe it's not. I don’t know if Mike struggled with this event. We never talked about it.

I put those drawings in the back of a closet, and they stayed there for decades. I discovered them while I was looking for something else. I looked them over, amateurish though they were, and I remembered the sounds, the smells, the fear, and the frustration of that night. It brought tears to my eyes again. There is nothing more crushing than knowing that you were the only one who could help, but you couldn't. Mike and I were that man's only hope to survive, to see his family again, and to have Thanksgiving, Christmas, or maybe Hanukkah. For all I know, his daughter was getting married the next day, or he was headed to the hospital to see his first baby being born. I know I did everything I could, yet I still feel helpless when I look at those pictures. All I know was that his one-armed push-ups got smaller and smaller and smaller until they stopped.

Epilogue:

If you or a first responder you know suffers from PTSD, please reach out to any of several resources for assistance:

https://www.codegreencampaign.org/resources/

https://www.frsn.org