‘Pray for our firefighters’: 8 injured after OC fire truck flips over on freeway
IRVINE, Calif. - An Orange County Fire Authority truck carrying firefighters who were on their way back from battling the 23,000-acre Airport Fire overturned on an Irvine freeway Thursday night, leaving eight firefighters injured.
The call came in just before 7 p.m. Thursday on State Route 241 near the Tomato Springs Toll Plaza. The crew members inside the flipped-over fire truck had just finished a 12-hour shift from responding to the Airport Fire, according to OCFA during a Sept. 19 press conference update.
The crash left eight people hurt, one of them needing to be airlifted out of the scene. Six of the eight crash victims were critically injured and taken to local trauma centers.
Three firefighters were rushed to Providence Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo. Two others were transported to the OC Global Medical Center in Santa Ana and one person was taken to UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. In addition, two of the eight patients were taken in stable condition to Hoag Hospital in Irvine.
"We ask that you pray for our firefighters and their families," said OCFA Fire Chief Brian Fennessy during a news conference about the incident. "This is the beginning of a long road for many of those firefighters and our fire departments," said Fennessy.
Fennessy said Friday morning that six firefighters injured in the crash remain hospitalized in conditions ranging from "stable to critical." He said "many of the injured are going to be hospitalized for quite a while," but he did not provide specifics about the injuries. Two other firefighters injured in the crash were treated and released last night from Hoag medical center.
By Saturday, two more firefighters had been released from the hospital, ranging in condition from stable to critical.
A fundraiser to help the firefighters injured Thursday night has raised more than $35,000 in less than a day. That fundraiser can be found by tapping or clicking here.
All of the crews that were involved in the response to the rollover crash went through a formal stress debriefing at the department headquarters.
Orange County Fire Authority Chief Brian Fennessy says the cause of last night's crash that injured eight firefighters remains under investigation. He said the vehicle "did swerve for whatever (reason) and did roll several times. What caused that, again, I have some thoughts but I don't have any factual information."
Images from SkyFOX showed what appeared to be an OCFA truck turned over, blocking multiple lanes. During the earlier stages of the investigation, the California Highway Patrol initially thought the vehicle was an ambulance.
The CHP issued a SigAlert overnight for the northbound lanes of the 241 Freeway before it was fully reopened by 6 a.m. Friday.