Responders fight heat, exhaustion, emotions at Okla. crash; 9 killed

By Michael Overall
The Tulsa World

MIAMI, Okla. — Loaded down with ice chests and bottled water, a second, then a third, wave of emergency crews raced to the accident scene, where first-responders were giving out from heat and exhaustion.

Hours after a tractor-trailer plowed into several cars on the Will Rogers Turnpike northeast of Miami, rescuers continued to call in reinforcements Friday afternoon.

"It was busy, very busy," said Kyle Arnall, a police officer and a paramedic for the Quapaw Tribe.

At least half a dozen agencies responded to the crash.

"The size of the rescue operation was almost like a tornado or some kind of natural disaster," Arnall said Saturday. "We were calling in as much help as we could get."

Temperatures reached 130 degrees on the pavement as paramedics and firefighters struggled for more than seven hours to free the victims.

Worse than the heat, emergency workers fought back strong emotions, Arnall said.

The crash killed nine people, including a 7-year-old.

"Especially when you get kids involved, it's hard to deal with," Arnall said. "It's a helpless situation you're in, because even though you're doing everything you can, it's not good enough."

Stationed at the Downstream Casino a few miles from the accident scene, Quapaw tribal crews were apparently the first to reach the crash site just after 1 p.m. Friday.

"All those guys are really shook up," said casino spokesman Sean Harrison. "It was such a mess of confusion, no amount of training can prepare you for something like that."

With traffic backed up for miles on the turnpike, wrecker crews from Vinita took a 45-minute detour through Kansas to reach the scene.

On the final leg of the trip, the wreckers drove west down the eastbound lanes as the Oklahoma Highway Patrol cleared a path.

"It was the worst accident I've ever seen," said Robert Foreman, the owner of Junior's Wrecker Service. "And I've been working accidents for 30 years. I've never seen one kill that many people before."

It took three wreckers to recover some of the trapped bodies two to lift the tractor-trailer off the ground and a third to pull cars out from beneath it.

"One car was wadded up like a ball," Foreman said. "They all looked like they had been through a crusher, just flattened."

He waited for officials to finish their investigation before removing the tractor-trailer from the highway.

Both lanes didn't reopen to traffic until midnight, Foreman said.