At the time of the call, I had only been on the truck for a few months and had not been to a car accident with little more than a bent fender and sore neck.  This particular morning the pager went off at about 2AM and we were dispatched to an accident on US 30 which runs through the middle of our coverage area.  Not thinking much of it other than just another car wreck on a rain soaked road, I jumped in my truck and headed for the station. 

This thought was short-lived since as soon as I jumped on the truck and we headed out, our chief came on the radio and told us he was going in the water.  Not something that I was used to hearing that early in the morning.  Upon arrival I was surprised to see a minivan in a ditch FULL of  fast moving water.  I was assigned to help other firefighters get one victim out of the vehicle and into a waiting ambulance.  It wasn't until after this task was done that I realized the full extent of the wreck.  The other vehicle involved was a semi that was loaded with steel I-beams. The truck ended up 4 lanes over, off the road on the other side. 

By this time,  the first wrecker was on scene and we were able to pull the van out of the ditch.   It was at this point that I realized this would be my first encounter with a victim who did not survive.  It took quite a while, what seemed like hours, to get the second victim out of the van.  This was the driver,  he had to be extracted.  Once that job was done, the rest of my time there was spent working on the recovery of the third victim's body from the wreckage.  This was not too bad for me because he had died on impact and this part didn't really affect me, or so I thought.

After we removed him and the coroner took over, I was released and went home.  It wasn't till months later that I realized just how much of an impact this had on me.  Every time I pass that spot now, I wonder when it will happen again; and I see the van with its nose in the ditch and think what will it be like next time. Will it be someone that I know? Can it get any worse?  I have since learned to forget those questions.  I have since responded to worse things and know without a doubt that there will always be one more call that will, in some way, be worse than the one that I thought would be 'the one'.