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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