Pa. Chief Recalls Freeing Trapped Truck Driver

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Aug. 16--Freeing a PennDOT driver from the twisted wreckage of his crashed dump truck Monday took longer than any other rescue Hellam Township's fire chief has ever been involved with, he said.

"When it takes us an hour and 28 minutes to get someone out, he's stuck in there pretty good," Fire Chief Fred Smeltzer Sr. said. "He was pinned by the dashboard, the steering column and the brake and clutch pedals."

State police said Michael Jay Dillman, 51, of Littlestown, was driving a state Department of Transportation dump truck on Codorus Furnace Road when he failed to negotiate a curve near the intersection of River Park Road about 10:38 a.m.

The truck went into the oncoming travel lane, then left the road and rolled on its left side, police

said.

Dillman was in serious condition Tuesday morning in York Hospital, a hospital spokesman said. He was wearing a seat belt, police said.

Piece by piece: Getting Dillman to a waiting medical helicopter took about 20 fire and rescue personnel from Hellam Township and surrounding areas, who did it "one piece at a time," Smeltzer said.

"We had to remove the roof to even get access to him," the fire chief said. "Once we got his body free, we had to start on each leg, because they were pinned separately."

Throughout the rescue effort, crews from a Memorial Hospital ambulance and Stat MedEvac medical helicopter checked Dillman and treated him when possible, according to Smeltzer. York County 911 radio transmissions indicated Dillman was unconscious during the rescue.

"We have been in rescue ... for 30 years and this was, by an hour, the longest rescue we've ever been involved in. Our norm is to have a person on a stretcher in 20 minutes max," Smeltzer said. "We had to remove it all -- the dashboard, steering wheel, pedals. It had to be cut, pried, sawed or chiseled out."

Codorus Furnace Road was closed for hours because to the crash. Smeltzer said the PennDOT truck was hauling ground up blacktop.

The cause of the crash remains under investigation. Hellam Township Police Commissioner Terry Inch said state police investigated the accident, rather than township police, because it involved a state-owned vehicle.

'Advanced' rescue: Although Smeltzer was in command of the entire scene, Hellam Township Deputy Fire Chief Scott Livelsberger coordinated and ran the rescue effort, with help from York Area United Battalion Chief Dan Hoff and Manchester Township Deputy Fire Chief Joe Madzelan.

"We knew we had a very advanced technical rescue which was going to last for an extended, lengthy amount of time," Smeltzer said.

He said he knew he needed to have backup equipment for every piece of rescue equipment being used on the scene, plus additional manpower to relieve tired rescuers.

Assisting Hellam Township at the scene were fire crews from areas including Manchester, Mount Wolf, Springettsbury Township, East Donegal Township and Columbia.

-- Reach Elizabeth Evans at levans@yorkdispatch.com, 505-5429 or twitter.com/ydcrimetime.