ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, September 25, 1996 TAG: 9609250075
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on September 26, 1996.
Wednesday's story on a wreck and rescue on Interstate 581 gave the
wrong hometown for the family of Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Hall. They live
in Jacksonville, N.C.
Somebody must have died in that wreck; that's what you thought when you saw it.
A small sedan had slammed sideways under the rear axle of a tractor-trailer. The truck dragged the car 500 feet. Sparks from the car ignited its gasoline, then the truck's load of retread rubber caught fire. The burning trailer collapsed on the car, turning it into a mangled mass of steaming, ash-colored metal.
For all the motorists who saw that horror show out on Interstate 581 Tuesday afternoon, here's a surprise: Everybody lived.
Marine Staff Sgt. Frankie Lee Hall was headed downtown to do police checks on potential Marine recruits when he saw a puff of smoke up ahead. Cars swerved in front of him. Then he saw the wreck.
The young woman who had been driving the car was wandering around in a daze. Hall saw a tourist-type fellow taking pictures, and the Georgia truck driver fiddling with his rig. Police and firefighters hadn't arrived.
Nobody was making a move to help the young man still in the car. Hall said he couldn't believe it.
"Damn that vehicle," he said of the truck. "Damn the pictures."
He drove his big blue van up close and ran to the car. The man was semiconscious and told Hall his ribs might be crushed.
"Various things started exploding," Hall said. "Once the fire kept getting bigger, ma'am, it was get him out of there or let him burn."
He pulled the man through a small hole in the wrecked roof, somewhere around where the steering wheel used to be.
Once clear of the car, the couple asked him to save their puppy, which was either still in the car or running around near it. The fire was too hot. "I really wanted to go back, but at that point, ma'am, it was too late."
Hall, 38, didn't serve in Desert Storm. "Unfortunately," he says.
"I've often wondered, when the rubber meets the road, how I would react."
Hall left the young couple with the lifesaving crews that surrounded the scene and went on about his business. He did his checks at the police department and returned to his Marine recruiting office on Peters Creek Road, grateful that he'd be working until 9 Tuesday night. He's new to Roanoke; his wife and children are still in Jacksonville, Fla. He didn't want to go to his empty home.
For truck driver Nelson Chandler, obviously shaken as he stood facing the wreck, having his pulse checked, this was a first. "Never before," he said. "Never before."
The Tallapoosa, Ga., man remembered looking in his mirror and seeing the car spin out into the median. Next thing he knew, the car had spun around at a right angle, shot directly in front of his rear tires and stayed there.
He didn't know what to do. "I didn't lock it down completely because I thought it might make it worse," he said. That's why the car was dragged so far.
State Trooper Mike Keen said Chandler's account was correct. The driver of the car told Keen she doesn't remember what happened.
The driver and her passenger urged Keen not to release their names and he agreed, even though the driver was charged Tuesday with reckless driving. The man was kept overnight at a hospital, but both are fine, according to Keen.
Keen wants to meet Hall and thank him. He figures the young couple will want to, too.
Before he learned Hall's name from a reporter Tuesday night, Keen wondered who the rescuer was. The couple didn't know.
"Neither of them can tell me," Keen said, "other than that they saw a uniform."
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. 1. Firefighters douse the flames ofby CNBthe remains of a car that ran underneath a moving tractor-trailer on
Interstate 581 Tuesday. 2. Truck driver Nelson Chandler of
Tallapoosa, Ga., talks to a firefighter about the accident. 3. ``It
was get him out of there or let him burn," said Marine Staff Sgt.
Frankie Lee Hall. color.