By Jessie Burchette
jburchette@salisburypost.com
CHINA GROVE ó A Landis firefighter who happened on a collision on N.C. 152 Sunday evening pulled two people from a burning car.
The woman and a child and the driver of a truck involved in the 7 p.m. collision were taken to CMC-NorthEast in Concord.
Their names or conditions were not immediately available.
The collision occurred at the intersection of N.C. 152 and Stirewalt Road, west of China Grove
Danny Eller, a Landis firefighter, saw the collision which sent the car, an older model Oldsmobile, off the road, stopping an estimated 15 feet from a house. The engine compartment caught fire.
Eller pulled the driver and a child from the car.The pickup truck pulling a trailer with a personal watercraft crashed into a China Grove water hydrant , with the trailer and watercraft also going into the adjacent yard.
Reed Linn, chief of the Landis Fire Department, who lives nearby, was one of the first emergency personnel to arrive on the scene.
Linn said the truck was smoking heavily and the driver had gotten out.
Linn and Frank Greene, information officer for the Atwell Fire Department credited Landis and China Grove police with slowing the car fire, using fire extinguisher, keeping it from being a threat to the nearby house.
Greene said the car fire was persistent. Although the engine was cut off and the keys out, it continued to short circuit, starting the engine and continually pumping fuel that fed the flames.
“The car gave us a fit for 15 minutes,” Greene said.
Once Atwell and China Grove trucks arrived with foam, the fire was extinguished.
Firefighters quickly removed the car battery to make sure it didn’t refire.
Greene and Linn said they aren’t sure how the accident happened. It appeared that one of the vehicles had pulled out of Stirewalt into the path of the other.
“It could have been a lot worse,” Greene said. He noted that while the house wasn’t in any real danger, the two people in the car were very lucky.
Linn said all three victims appeared to have head trauma and the two people in the car appeared to have sustained some broken bones.
Trooper W.M. Vickers of the N.C. Highway Patrol said late Sunday, he was on the way to the hospital to interview the drivers.