Fire engine crash leaves five injured
Parked cars, tree crunched on Comm. Ave.
A dramatic Back Bay fire engine crash injured four firefighters and a civilian while crushing a Jeep, damaging eight other cars and even plowing down a tree and turning a sidewalk to rubble.
“It’s shocking,” said Lisa Simmons, whose Saab was one of nine parked cars damaged in a domino effect on Commonwealth Avenue. “What can you do? ... Thank God no one was in any of these cars.”
The fire truck, which was responding to a report of smoke at 1120 Boylston St., was traveling west on Commonwealth Avenue at 11:26 a.m. when it collided with a Chevrolet Equinox heading north on Dartmouth Street, Fire Commissioner Joseph Finn said.
Neither Boston police nor Finn could say who had the light at the time, even though a police camera is on the corner where the crash took place. But the fire truck had its siren and lights on, Finn said.
The truck then swerved onto the sidewalk, mowed down a tree and smashed into a parked Jeep, nearly obliterating it, and causing the chain reaction that left eight other parked cars damaged as well, said Steve MacDonald, a fire department spokesman.
The driver of the SUV the fire truck initially collided with and four firefighters, including a fire captain, all were taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, where they were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, Finn said.
Even parts of the sidewalk underneath the fire engine were reduced to rubble, and heavy equipment had to be brought in to lift the truck off one of the parked cars.
Kaitlin Stratton, a Bay State College sophomore, had just parked on Commonwealth Avenue with her parents when the crash occurred.
“I heard the siren coming from behind,” she said. “I felt the ground shaking. I heard my dad yelling to the SUV, ‘ Stop! Stop! Stop! But it was too late.”
Stratton, 20, said she rushed with her parents to the SUV and yelled, “Is everyone OK?”
“My mom is a nurse and checked to see if (the driver) was breathing,” she said. “He had a pulse. He started coming to. He was obviously shaken up. ... I always took life pretty much for granted before this.”
The fire truck was a reserve engine that was being used because the front-line engine was being serviced, MacDonald said.
“It just means it’s old, but it’s functional and safe,” he said, although he could not immediately say when the reserve truck was last serviced and for what reason.