The start of the most horrific and challenging 48 hours of the trip began in Lithuania on Thursday morning at 6.30am. We met Taddas and Edmundo our fixers and followed them north and into Latvia as we headed to the Russian border. Taddas had kindly arranged a spot of swimming on the way. Well lake swimming at a stunning lake side house owned by his friend who actually owned the lake itself which was about the size of an English county. We had planned the swim so you can all stop panicking that we didn\u2019t have shorts on!<\/p>\n
Lithuania is really a stunningly beautiful country. As we entered Latvia we headed left for the Russian border. It was about now that lady luck began to tease. Firstly the rear locker had buckled and come out of it\u2019s runners. Unable to open it or fix it, the brains of B.J.Battye and the infamous heavy hand approach of C.J.Moore combined, cutting wires, breaking off metal like men and forced it back resulting in a complete fix! Very pleased with our \u201cwe fix things\u201d mentality.<\/p>\n
[flickr album=72157624634350964 num=30 size=Square]<\/p>\n
Now I have to set the scene. As we approached the border the sky was dark with lightning in the sky above mother Russia. We stopped a few hundred yards back in a queue of cars with rain coming down. The Latvian\/Russian border was there in front of us at 1700 hrs.<\/p>\n
This is where, and you will have to excuse the pun, the wheels came off. As we edged our way forward in the queue the rain came down. Steve and the fixers had gone to the border and returned with the bad news that we would be up to 24hrs late leaving Latvia due to the sheer volume of vehicles ahead of us. No bribe or begging could get us through and we were all disheartened at the prospect of sleeping in a car park.<\/p>\n
It was at this moment that the sun began to shine. As we pondered what to do for the next 24 hours the silence was broken by the absolutely horrific noise of a 40 tonne articulated lorry crashing into the queue behind us without braking. Cars were thrown 70 metres through the air whilst others were simply crushed by the speed of the impact. Where we had been sat 15mins earlier now resembled a film set from a Hollywood disaster film.<\/p>\n
The lorry ploughed on veering off the road, down a bank and crashing into a pylon. We naturally ran towards the scene of carnage. Steve shouting for the de-fib, medical kit and extinguishers. The sound of metal being crushed was replaced by the cracking of the electricity and sparks from the pylon and then the screams of people. It was like a bomb and had gone off. Steve was met by a man with clothes ripped off and covered in blood from head to foot. Fires were starting in the cars which we put out.<\/p>\n
With a huge language barrier people were looking at us thinking fire fighters with a truck. The guys were all thinking about their Prometheus medical training realising the dreadful day when these skills would be required had arrived. My first thoughts were what did we need. In England this scene would need a dozen fire engines, a dozen ambulances, a helicopter plus police. We had nothing but our training and equipment given by Dr Malcolm Russell and his Prometheus team.<\/p>\n
[flickr album=72157624634370848 num=30 size=Square]<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to say what happened next and in no way is it ramped up to sound heroic. We just did what\u00a0I think anyone would have done. Steve had organised a triage system for the injured. George and Ben were administering first aid including stemming bleeding and fitting a neck brace. Ross and I went down the bank to the two vehicles that had been flown through the air and were crushed. Putting out small fires I found a young boy alive in one of the crushed cars. With a lot of luck I managed to free him from the buckled seat and pull him out of the car before carrying him up the bank and passing him to Steve. It\u2019s now I have to say it dawned on me that we must be dealing with multiple fatalities.<\/p>\n
It really can\u2019t be under estimated how much the medical training from one of our main sponsors, Prometheus, was now worth. I looked around and saw all of the crew performing professionally and heroically. Bit by bit the training came back. Steve was disconnecting the car batteries on the accessible ones to reduce risk of fire, we conducted a search of the trees and bushes to look for bodies that may have been thrown clear of the cars and amazingly we all kept calm. The truck itself had to be left as the pylon had brought down the wires and it was unsafe to approach despite the driver being still inside.<\/p>\n
Over 6 cars had been destroyed, with others damaged yet we did not find a body. It was a truly a miracle. I reckon 20 people were in these vehicles but the sun coming out caused most of them to get out just minutes before the accident. We can\u2019t honestly tell you how no one died. To find and free people alive was unbelievable. The emergency services arrived. Well a 1940\u2019s fire engine with no equipment except a ladder and water and a couple of ambulances which were devoid of even the most basic equipment we have in this country. As for the police well \u201che\u201d arrived about an hour later and arrested the truck driver who was naked and could not stand due to being so drunk.<\/p>\n
The mental impact of the accident hit home as we set up camp in our car park for the night. I could see the complete shock and fear on all of our faces. I personally was so proud of Steve, Ross, George and Ben. We all pulled together as a team in a moment of crisis and performed professionally. The photos below were only taken after we established no one had been killed. And to Dr Malcolm Russell and the Prometheus team in Hereford, a huge thank you. Your time, training, equipment and ability was vital to us.<\/p>\n
Morale was shot. 5 guys in a truck were simply in shock. Hardly any words were spoken. But in the best of British spirit, out came the cricket set and humour namely Steve\u2019s now infamous war rallying call of \u201cDeeeeeeee-Fiiiibbbbbbbbbbbbbb\u201d as he ran, George disappearing in the foliage as we searched for bodies, and Steve\u2019s view of me carrying the boy up to him i.e baby from burning house in Kurt Russell\u2019s Backdraft with the \u201cthat\u2019s my brother god damn it\u201d line.<\/p>\n
We were lucky.\u00a0 All of the injured were lucky. But now at about 2000 hrs on Thursday any luck we had truly left us!\u00a0 So today was horrific.\u00a0 But it now was to get worse……………..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The start of the most horrific and challenging 48 hours of the trip began in Lithuania on Thursday morning at 6.30am. We met Taddas and Edmundo our fixers and followed them north and into Latvia as we headed to the Russian border. Taddas had kindly arranged a spot of swimming on the way. Well lake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expedition-updates","category-stage-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2564"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6020,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2564\/revisions\/6020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}