Posted on 08/18/2010 4:01:19 PM PDT by Feline_AIDS
CHESTER COUNTY -- From somewhere in a part of her 58-year-old body – undiscovered before Monday and hopefully never to be needed again – Rosa Caldwell found strength.
“Before that,” she said, “the only words I could call out was, ‘Help me, Jesus.’ ”
The 13-year-old Plymouth in which she was riding, with her good friend Deloise Clawson, had just smashed into a concrete barrier dividing the traffic on Interstate 77.
Deloise Clawson, left, and Rosa Caldwell survived a crash on I-77 that killed a truck driver.
Clawson was driving southbound on I-77 – after the pair had finished their shift at Ross clothing distributor in Fort Mill – when a truck carrying gasoline collided with their car, and both vehicles slammed into that barrier.
The carnage on the road covered the highway. Gasoline was already pouring onto the road, burning in spikes that shot into the air, even through the drainage ditches and causing more flames.
The truck lay on its side, gas leaking, flames licking, heat grabbing. “I was able to take off my seat belt and get out,” said Caldwell. “The flames were right next to us. It was so hot.”
In the driver’s seat, though, 56-year-old Clawson could not get out.
“The truck had hit me on our side, and my side was smashed,” Clawson said. “We had just got on the highway at Exit 88 going south. The truck hit us on the driver side, and dragged us all the way from the right lane to the lane by the wall.
“All I could think about was: ‘Jesus! Jesus you can help us. Only you.’ We hit, then I heard the truck exploding.”
Caldwell, battered, called out to Clawson after she freed herself. “Deloise, c’mon honey. Baby, we got to get out of this car before the whole thing blows up.”
As Clawson in the driver seat screamed out: “Rosa, I can’t get out!,” Caldwell reached over from the passenger side. Caldwell freed the seat belt from Clawson, and tugged with all her strength.
“But I just couldn’t get her out,” Caldwell recalled. “So I tried again. I held her. I grabbed onto her. And I just pulled until I was able to drag her out of there.
“I found the strength somewhere I didn’t know I had.”
Almost immediately, other drivers who had stopped after the crash helped Caldwell and Clawson limp farther away from the growing blaze.
The strangers even graciously asked the two ladies their names and held them tight.
“There was a man and a woman,” Caldwell recalled, “and I put my head on that lady’s shoulder and cried, and she kept saying, ‘Ms. Caldwell, you are all right now. Ms. Rosa, you are gonna be all right. Honey, we got you.’
“There are caring and decent and gracious people out there in this world. Two of them found us. Then all those emergency people, too.”
The first man to stop and help out was 37-year-old Will Graham, sales manager for Rock Hill’s Home Ice Co.
Graham was driving north on I-77 when he saw the fireball from the initial explosion after the crash in the southbound lanes. Graham pulled his truck off the highway as another stopped motorist came up screaming: “We gotta save em!”
Graham ran across four lanes of traffic with his truck’s fire extinguisher, then leaped over the barrier to find the two ladies just coming out of the car.
“I asked if they were all right to move and if there was anybody else in the car,” Graham said. “The truck – the cab – it was already engulfed in flames when I jumped over the median. There was no way to get inside it.”
Graham helped both ladies move a few feet away from the crash scene, but the tires on the truck started to explode and the fire had consumed their car.
He put Clawson’s arm over his shoulder and helped her and Caldwell to the right side of the road farther from the crash, and then other motorists – including the unnamed lady who soothed Caldwell, stopped, too.
Graham even took Caldwell’s phone from her shaking hands and called her husband, George, to tell him she was injured but all right.
That was my take, too.
1) You can't avoid a wreck and cause a wreck.
2) If you are in the perfect right, maintain control (in lane) and brake good enough, hard enough to bring everything to a stop.
*Ben there, done that.
A couple of years back, I was on my way home on I77 South to Columbia and close to this area when I came up on this solitary burning car.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pphs4pJnTpg
is taken Here This picture shows two signs..one big double and one tiny one that looks like it's on top of the police car. See here to see the approximate place of the crash
Based on the approximate location, it's about half a mile south of the END of the on ramp. They would have been traveling roughly 30 seconds or so to get there...this didn't happen at the on ramp, well after.
I agree.
And I don’t want to say any more or it will _ sound _ heartless.
Too many truckers panic and make things worse.
I walked away from OTR after this type of encounter.
Interesting. It seems to have happened right at the sign, which is way down from the entrance ramp. Maybe they were changing lanes? Apparently they didn’t just whip into traffic from the on-ramp.
Based on this, she could be in trouble...vehicular homicide...magritte
The trucking company is the one with the insurance money to pay for the road damage.
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