Tiny fire station a lifeline for millions traveling to Vegas
The rain was pounding in the Mojave Desert on the Saturday before Easter when the first call came in about a crash along Interstate 15. Details were sketchy: head-on collision, Mercedes versus another car, a 7-year-old not breathing, a nurse on scene performing CPR.
San Bernardino County Fire Protection District Capt. Dan Tellez and his crew were more than a half hour away. The next closest responding ambulance was more than 70 miles away, and the nearest trauma center was more than an hour away by road – if there was no traffic.
Fire Station 53 in the tiny town of Baker, home to the “world’s tallest thermometer,” has the only dedicated emergency medical services to cover a 93-mile span of the four-lane highway between Yermo and the Nevada border.
The freeway draws more than 15 million vehicles a year through an immense, mostly empty land of extreme heat and occasional bitter cold between Las Vegas and
Los Angeles. Every day, well over a hundred-times Baker’s own population of 422 people blazes by – often at very high speeds, sometimes intoxicated – and the rescuers in this little blip out their windows will be the ones who try to save them in a wreck.
“The freeway is our population,” Tellez said. “When somebody crashes out here, when somebody needs help, we are it.”
At any one time, there are only five people assigned to the station set on the edge of a sandy basin speckled with yucca and scrub. The crew work four-day shifts and cover roughly 5,000 square miles, an area larger than Los Angeles County. And this arrangement is an improvement from years past, when the station didn’t exist and convicts from a nearby prison, under the supervision of a fire captain, responded to highway crashes.
Tellez, a veteran firefighter who was in charge of Fire Station No. 53 that rainy day, pulled up to the scene 40 minutes after the call.
They were just seven miles from the station, at mile marker 145, near Halloran Springs. But the reality of Fire Station 53 is that rescuers are often elsewhere, sometimes far away. Tellez had been near the Nevada border, about 25 miles from the scene of the accident, when the call came through.
He arrived behind the unit’s two-man ambulance with his engineer and firefighter. They were the first paramedics to arrive. Had the incident happened in Los Angeles or Las Vegas, paramedics, police and other emergency personnel would have swarmed the area in minutes. Television crews likely wouldn’t have been far behind.
The wind was howling and people were strewn along the highway amid the wreckage of a Mercedes GLE 350 and a Kia Sorrento. He had expected three or four injured people. There were 10.
“It was one of the worst-case scenarios,” Tellez said.
Other drivers had pulled over to help. An emergency room doctor, a pediatric anesthesiologist, some nurses and others were tending to the wounded.
Witnesses said the Kia had been speeding toward Los Angeles.
William Coddington was at the wheel with his partner, Alicia Ramos, at his side and their two children and his two stepchildren in back. The couple’s relationship had been on the rocks and this trip was an attempt to repair their relationship, family members said.
“Her mother begged her not to go,” said Marie Hernandez, Ramos’ cousin.
Driving the opposite way, were Cristobal Cortes Castillo, 37, his girlfriend, Iliana German, 35 and her two children – taking advantage of the kids’ spring break to visit family on a road they regularly traveled.
As they approached Mile Marker 145, German turned around to ask the kids if they had their seatbelts on. They did.
Coming toward them, Coddington lost control and the Kia hydroplaned, then barreled over the median, according to the California Highway Patrol.
In the Mercedes, German came to with her body crushed under the dashboard. Trapped, she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Then a woman opened the door and took off her belt. She asked for her children, and was assured they were fine.
She heard her daughter Danna, 12, scream, “Mi pierna, mi pierna.” My leg. But she never heard her 11-year-old son, Derek.
“I felt like so much time was passing,” she said. “I didn’t know if anyone was going to help us.”
She didn’t know people were trying to resuscitate Derek – her sweet, generous boy who played soccer and was learning to box. He died before the sirens arrived.
In the Kia, Ramos – beloved at the Madera nursing home where she worked – was fatally injured and would die in a hospital that day. Her teenage son Issac, 13, was already dead. Coddington was lying on the ground bleeding, alive but staring blankly. His 3-year-old boy, Liam, lost an arm.
Between 2019 and 2023, at least 112 people died in crashes along the span, often the result of speeding or intoxicated drivers, CHP data show. Fire Station 53 responded to nearly 1,000 calls on the roadway, at least half of which were crashes.