By Ryan Robinson
Lancaster New Era (Pennsylvania)
KINZER, Pa. — Kinzer Fire Company Chief Doug Brubaker didn’t know when he responded to a “pedestrian struck” call Friday that it would hit his department so tragically close to home.
On the way, Brubaker picked up David Fisher, a volunteer firefighter, to help him at the scene.
“He shared with me in the car that it could have been one of his children,” Brubaker said today.
Arriving at 788-C Strasburg Road after the 8 a.m. accident, the chief and Assistant Fire Chief Wayne Anderson tried to help a boy who had been struck by a car while riding to school on a scooter.
But the 11-year-old had already died.
Brubaker realized it was Fisher’s son.
“I looked at (Fisher) and he nodded his head, yeah,” Brubaker said.
The boy was John S., one of six children of David and Mary Fisher of 829-A Strasburg Road.
The Kinzer firefighters quickly took Fisher away from the tragic scene and let the Paradise and Gap fire companies take over.
Kinzer Fire Company went out of service the rest of the day. The company’s approximately 40 active volunteer firefighters started dealing with their grief.
They are still going through counseling today, the day of the boy’s funeral.
“It is always hard when an incident is dealing with children,” said Brubaker, a father himself who’s been with Kinzer Fire Company for 25 years. “This way compounded it because it was one of our members’ children.”
Brubaker said the boy was riding his scooter on his way to a school on Wolf Rock Road when he was struck.
He said he thinks the boy was with an older brother at the time, and that his other siblings had gone to school earlier.
State police said the boy was traveling west on the shoulder of Strasburg Road (Route 741) when he crossed into the path of a motorist who was driving a 1992 Buick Century sedan.
Trooper Adam Shutter said today that the district attorney is still investigating but Shutter believes charges are “most likely not going to happen.”
The 17-year-old girl driver has not been identified. Police said she was wearing a seat belt and was not injured.
The fatal crash occurred along the same stretch of road where a Delaware man died when his car collided with an oncoming piece of farm machinery on Nov. 1.
It is also near the Belmont Road intersection of Route 741, the site of 18 crashes from 2003 through 2007, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Brubaker said it is a dangerous stretch because some motorists speed along the straight road, but he didn’t know if speed played any part in Friday’s wreck.
Kinzer Fire Company members together attended the boy’s viewing Friday night to show their support for the family.
Today, many of them planned to help control traffic at intersections near his funeral to assure safety of those attending, Brubaker added.
The accident has had a huge impact on the fire company that Brubaker doesn’t believes will ever go away.
“You don’t realize how close you are until something like this happens,” Brubaker said. “We need to be there for each other.
“We have shed lots of tears. We are hurting right along with Dave and Mary.”
Brubaker also commented on the “close brotherhood” among area fire companies, which called and assisted Kinzer Fire Company after the crash.
This Christmas, Brubaker said he will be more appreciative of his own family because of the accident.
Some of his fellow firefighters have expressed the same sentiment.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be the same after going through this,” he said.
Copyright 2008 Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.