Lori Steineck
The Repository, Canton, Ohio
LAKE TOWNSHIP, Ohio — A Uniontown firefighter, injured when a woman struck the fire truck he was driving, tried to help free her from the wreckage, according to Assistant Chief Derek Shaffer.
Additional firefighters summoned to state Route 619 and Mogadore Avenue NW where the 8:21 p.m. crash occurred Saturday used extrication equipment to free her, Shaffer said. The woman was transported to Aultman Hospital by a fire department ambulance.
The firefighter was taken to Summa Health Medical Center in Green.
Shaffer said neither suffered life-threatening injuries.
The crash remained under investigation Monday by the Ohio Highway Patrol’s Canton post, which could not be reached for comment.
Shaffer said the woman told the firefighters she fell asleep behind the wheel of her car, resulting in the crash.
The fire department’s Facebook page shows the fire truck was returning to the station from a crash at Lake Center Street NW and Hoover Avenue. Details of that crash were not available, but Shaffer said his department did not take anyone to a hospital as a result of that crash.
As Engine/Rescue truck. No. 4514 headed west on U.S. 619 with two firefighters aboard, a woman in an eastbound car traveled left of center, Shaffer said.
The firefighter who was driving the truck “saw her coming and was table to take aggressive maneuvers to make sure they would not hit head-on,” Shaffer said.
Her car hit the driver’s side of the fire engine. She was trapped in her car.
The firefighter was treated and released. The woman’s condition was not available on Monday.
The fire department said the truck will be “out of service for an extended period of time.”
“That was our rescue truck,” Shaffer said. “We have another fire engine that we are moving the equipment over to temporarily until we figure out what’s going on.”
He did not have an estimate of the damaged done.
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