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Happy To Be Alive

Posted Jan 10, 2008 by Gretchen Parker

Updated Jan 10, 2008 at 04:03 PM

Eric Rannebarger, also known as morning radio personality Eric Michaels on Lakeland’s 98.3 FM, is recovering in his den today in Davenport. He’s sore, bruised and cut, but says he’s healing.

“I’m walking, and I’m living and breathing, so it’s a good day,” Rannebarger said. Phone calls and visitors came in a steady stream. Friends and co-workers sent e-mail, too, as they found out he had been banged up in Wednesday’s I-4 pileup.

Rannebarger’s show starts at 6 a.m.; he was headed west toward the radio station when his 2000 Mazda Protégé slid into the mess of cars and tractor-trailers. He described it as hitting a “wall of dirty, white, gray fog.”

After he climbed out of his car, he worried he was having a heart attack. His chest hurt, he was nauseated and he had pain on his left side. A tractor-trailer driver helped him into his cab and gave him a bottle of water before an ambulance took him away about three hours later, Rannebarger said.

Today he is still struggling to make sense of what happened. He wants more details, but when he watches and reads news reports, he gets emotional.

“It takes me back there,” he said. Rannebarger said he’ll look for a counselor to help him deal with the anxiety.

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A War Zone

Posted Jan 10, 2008 by Valerie Kalfrin

Updated Jan 10, 2008 at 04:37 PM

Douglas Galliher, 65, of Auburndale, came by Fantasy of Flight to take pictures for his boss. Investigators are keeping cars involved in Wednesday’s horrific Interstate 4 crash at the attraction.

Galliher is a tow truck operator for Webb’s Towing in Lakeland.

“It looked like a war zone.  A lot of cars were tore up.  It was amazing, absolutely amazing, more people didn’t get killed.  It was such intense fire it melted the asphalt.”

Galliher described how the crews used recovery machinery such as forklifts to move wreckage. 

They found a car buried beneath an overturned rock truck.

“While scraping up debris, we come upon a car.  It was so burned, it melted the license plate off.”

Rescuers put the remains of a driver in a body bag, Galliher said. 

“It tore me up.  I broke down yesterday.  I was already upset real bad.”

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Most Burned Mail Came From These ZIPs

Posted Jan 10, 2008 by TBO.com

Updated Jan 10, 2008 at 03:31 PM

The United States Postal Service says the roughly 490 pieces of Priority Mail that burned in the Interstate 4 wrecks on Wednesday came from Southwest Florida.

The mail may have come from ZIP codes beginning with these numbers: 335, 336, 337, 338, 339, 341, 342 and 346.

Here’s where you can check tracking and tracing for a Priority Mail item mailed on Tuesday to the Central Florida or Miami area.

For information regarding claims on insured packages, go here.

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‘Are You Still With Us?’

Posted Jan 10, 2008 by Billy Townsend

Updated Jan 10, 2008 at 03:00 PM

Tony Crouse tries not to learn too much about the people he and other firefighters help. He doesn’t ask about their families or hobbies or aspirations. A little professional distance helps the Polk County deputy fire chief leave the job behind when he goes home each night.

So he’s a little surprised the name of one victim has stuck with him.

It’s the first name of a man who spent nearly six hours trapped beneath an overturned Kane’s Furniture box truck in the heart of the 43-car conflagration that set off Wednesday morning’s series of crashes on Interstate 4. His full identity has not been released, so even his first name won’t be used here.

Crouse was one of the first responders who talked with the man while special operations fire-rescue crews from Osceola, Polk and Orange counties and Lakeland worked to free him. He finally was cut free of the debris about 10:30 a.m. Fire and police officials have said the man likely will live and praised his fortitude in holding out for more than five hours without losing consciousness.

Crouse said the man kept his sense of humor as rescue workers swarmed around him and kept him talking.

Said Crouse: “One of the other chiefs asked, ‘Are you still with us?’ ”

And he answered: “Where am I going?”

As deputy chief of the Polk Fire Department, Crouse sleeps at home each night rather than a station. He responded from his Auburndale house Wednesday morning, taking State Road 559 north to I-4.

To access the crash site from the west, Crouse said he drove a fire department vehicle east on the edge of the westbound lanes, which suffered less serious crashes and were less obstructed. When he hit the wall of smoke and fog that obscured the sprawling crash scene, Crouse said, he was forced to drive by poking his head out the window to see. He crawled along, following a white line painted on the edge of the road. Occasionally the fog lights on his truck appeared to form their own lines in the murk, complicating the drive, which he called scary and confusing.

He eventually reached a spot where other firefighters already had arrived. They began to ferry rescue equipment from the westbound lanes, across a high tension three-wire fence in the median and to the crash scenes. They brought Jaws of Life, spreaders, blow torches, air bags, air bottles and other specialized rescue equipment.

How dark were the conditions? The burning tractor-trailers were yards away to the east, but Crouse and other responders couldn’t see the fire.

A group of responders, including Crouse, worked to remove a pickup that was “embedded in the back of a semi.”

They succeeded when a nearby trucker with a chain gave them the keys to his rig and allowed them to pull the pickup free.

Rescue workers from eastern counties such as Osceola and Osceola worked their way in from the east, with rescue workers from Lakeland and Hillsborough County moving in from the west, eventually converging in the middle. Polk officers worked their way in from both sides. 

Crouse said there is no training for working blind. “That’s something new.”

 

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Videos: I-4 Construction, Investigation and National Attention

Posted Jan 10, 2008 by Beth Gaddis

Updated Jan 10, 2008 at 02:19 PM

Here are some News Channel 8 video updates on how the I-4 repairs and crash investigation are proceeding.  Also, a survivor of the crash appeared on “The Today Show” to share the story of how he and his 3-year-old son survived the crash.  Part of that interview appeared on the News Channel 8 midday show today.

After heavy fog this morning, construction crews got back to work.

Inspectors examine about 40 vehicles involved in the fatal crashes on I-4.

Crash survivor Kevin Wilson shares his story.

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