By Cory Matteson
By Lincoln Journal Star
LINCOLN, Neb. — Troy Hurd wore a pair of running pants and a white shirt as he drove along Interstate 80 with his boy.
He looked pretty much like all the other Sunday drivers who stopped driving and ran toward a ditch as they came upon an overturned van April 29, 2007.
Everybody wanted to help, Hurd said. Though he was the only off-duty Lincoln firefighter and paramedic there, “I’m no different than them, but I just had a little more training,” he said.
Hurd was one of 17 people acknowledged during a Lincoln Fire & Rescue awards banquet Tuesday. Hurd was credited with being at the right place at the right time when a van filled with 18 Sudanese church singers and two adults blew a tire and rolled off I-80 just west of Lincoln.
People hammered on their cell phones, all dialing the same three digits, flooding the same line. There was an immediate sense of chaos, Hurd said.
He asked people to help count the children in the ditch, their numbers reaching double figures. He told them he was a Lincoln firefighter and said he’d call 911. Training kicked in, he said, as it would with any emergency worker. His description of the accident to 911 dispatchers prepared emergency crews for the rescue effort ahead, said Deputy Chief Pat Borer, who was on duty that day.
The patients were treated and sent to various hospitals in a little more than an hour. Everyone survived.
“I just did what was right that day,” Hurd, 32, said. “I didn’t do anything out of the norm.”