BY JON OLSON AND A.D. VICKERY
For the first-in engine company, this inci-dent started out as a single-engine response to a two-car motor vehicle accident with an address in a railyard. For the captain of the technical rescue unit, it presented a 176,000-pound extrication challenge.
The incident occurred at 0943 hours on the only day of the year there was a heavy snowfall; the railroad yard was covered in melting snow. The driver of a 176,000-pound intermodal forklift could not see that he had driven the front wheel of his rig onto the lid of a vault. In seconds, the concrete lid broke and launched, causing the fully extended loader to topple over. The vault was just big enough for the loader's eight-foot-high wheel. The loader toppled onto an occupied pickup truck.In the next millisecond, time expanded for the victim. She was supposed to transport the driver of the loader from one part of the railyard to another. It was a simple and routine task, but following a loud noise and steel's shrink-wrapping her, her life was to be changed for a long time.
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