Updated at 7:16 p.m.
By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – A volunteer firefighter was airlifted after a fire engine rolled off a roadway as it responded to a call for a smoke investigation last night in central Lewis County.
The driver of the Lewis County Fire District 8 engine was on his way to a 9:34 p.m. call and traveling on the 700 block of Cinebar Road, according to Lewis County Fire District 1.
“He contacted dispatch at 9:43 p.m. saying he had wrecked and needed help,” District 1 Assistant Chief Rhonda Volk said.
She and six others from the Onalaska department responded, Volk said. A District 8 crew responded as well.
They found the truck a ways down a heavily wooded and steep embankment, where it was laying on its side, having crashed into a large maple tree, Volk said.
They had to use a chainsaw to get access to the driver, but he was conscious and still talking, according to Volk.
He was airlifted from District 8’s main station in Salkum, but Volk didn’t know what hospital he was flown to. District 8 Chief Duran McDaniel, who was out of town, said later today the injured firefighter was life-flighted to St. Joseph Hospital in Tacoma.
They plan to keep him for a couple more days, McDaniel said.
“We know he’s bruised, but no other complications other than majorly bruised up,” he said.
The chief spoke to the injured firefighter, who is one of his lieutenants, this evening; he said an elk walked out in front of him, he said.
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington State Patrol both responded to the scene.
It was their second-newest engine that was damaged, but the department has a reserve engine it can use, according to McDaniel.
Volk said she believed the smoke or fire investigation call the driver was headed to was for a bonfire.
McDaniel said the injured firefighter was going out to deal with someone who was violating the burn ban, a chore that has caused the chief increasing frustration.
Early last week, McDaniel said he’d been called out every day during the previous week for people in the district burning campfires, something currently prohibited.
He knows the subject of last night’s call didn’t cause the fire truck to crash, but it was an otherwise unnecessary dispatch.
“If people would just follow the rules, we don’t have to put the trucks on the road,” McDaniel said.