A dramatic rescue from the wreckage in Sacramento, after a chain reaction sent a moving truck over a guardrail.
The crash trapped the driver inside the burning truck, giving rescuers little time to save his life.
Over the span of six minute, what started as a minor collision led to four vehicle crashing.
One of them, a Budget moving truck, flew over the edge of the causeway, landed 35 feet below, and caught on fire.
"Fire engine company got a hose line from up here, kept the fire in check," Joe Tinney of the Davis Fire Department said. "We could see the driver was still alive then we had to do a rescue operation to get him out of there."
The rescue took close to an hour and included dozens of firefighters from surrounding areas. The driver was conscious but trapped in the cab. The biggest
challenge was access.
"You can’t get there really with a fire engine, so we had to do all of our operations from up here on top of the roadway," Tinney said. So it was a big challenge. We had to do some things real quickly."
Highway patrol officers said crashed on the causeway are notoriously bad.
In this case, the initial crash involved two dark cars and happened just before dawn, which meant oncoming driver likely couldn’t see the vehicles involved.
Alcohol and drugs are not expected to be involved.
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