FREDERICKTOWN — “He was stuck between the seat and steering wheel,” truck driver Mike Grogg said when he pulled another truck driver from a burning truck this morning. A driver for United Precast Inc., Grogg, 36, of Fredericktown was following another UPI truck on Ohio 95 west of Fredericktown at McClelland Road.
Driver Tom Kidwell, 63, Wooster, was rounding the corner at the intersection when his tractor-trailer, loaded with a 35,000-pound reinforced concrete box culvert left the right side of the curve and rolled on its top. “It caught fire right away, I stopped my truck and grabbed the fire extinguisher but the diesel fuel was burning too hot.” Grogg said he managed to pull Kidwell from the smashed truck cab and up a small hill into a cemetery just back from the road. Kidwell was banged up but otherwise apparently uninjured.
Grogg said when he went to Kidwell’s rescue he yelled at someone who arrived on the scene to call 9-1-1. The crash happened about 6:30 a.m.
He said the Fredericktown Community Volunteer Fire Department was quickly on the scene. They put out the fire with foam. Assistant Fire Chief Larry Schunke was on his way to work at Kokosing when the call came in. He was on the scene in three minutes.
Several of the UPI trucks loaded with the box culverts were en route to a construction site near Toledo. UPI Transportation and Logistics director Tad Johns was on the scene but said he couldn’t speculate what happened until he talked with Kidwell. The Ohio State Highway Patrol is investigating the crash.
Ohio 95 was blocked for an hour with firefighters directing traffic.
