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‘An amazing moment in time’
Team drivers rescue motorist from burning car in 36 minutes
and earn 2019 Highway Angels of the Year Award
By Wendy Miller
Most truck drivers spend the better part of the year over
the road. In the overall calculations of the total minutes
on the road, 36 minutes doesn’t seem very significant.
For Hirschbach Motor Lines, Inc., drivers Ed and Tracy
Zimmerman — and one very lucky motorist — on a late spring
morning along a West Virginia interstate, it only took 36 minutes for
several lives to be changed and one to be saved.
The Zimmermans, a driver team and married couple from
Kenesaw, Nebraska, wouldn’t normally have been in West Virginia
that day in May 2019, the couple said, noting that the route is one
of the less traveled for them. Ed was sleeping as Tracy took her turn
at the wheel. While traveling on Interstate 77 near Beckley, West
Virginia, the couple arrived on the scene of a fiery crash.
Acting swiftly, Tracy stopped the truck, as another motorist who
had stopped to help, approached the window, telling them that a
man was stuck in the burning car. Tracy woke Ed and they sprang
into action, grabbing their fire extinguisher and heading toward the
car without a second thought.
“When that man said that (someone) was still trapped in the
burning vehicle, I’m like, ‘We gotta get him out,’” said Ed. “I don’t
know how yet. I haven’t seen it yet, but we gotta get him out.”
The Zimmermans, with the help of the other motorist who had
stopped to assist, were able to pry the car door open with a crowbar
and pull the man from the driver’s seat. Then, the driver revealed
that he had a firearm and ammunition in the car.
“We all just kind of looked at each other like, ‘We gotta move, and
now,’” explained Ed.
By this time, the small fire extinguisher from the Zimmermans’
truck had been exhausted — and it would likely never have
completed the job anyway. They grabbed the driver by the
waistband of his pants and pulled him 25 feet or so farther from the
car, just as a turnpike courtesy vehicle arrived and parked between
the burning vehicle and the group.
“[The courtesy officer] got out of the car and within just minutes,
even seconds, you hear the ammunition popping off, and then you
hear this big sizzle and a hiss,” shared Tracy. “And then the explosion,
as the car went flying in the air.”
Tracy said shortly thereafter the first responders arrived on the
scene and treated the driver’s minor injuries, carried him to the
hospital, put out the fire, and cleared the road. The Zimmermans’
work was done, and they climbed back into the truck and got back
on the road. When Tracy had parked the truck, she never changed
her ELD status. The clock had been running and showed that the
incident had only taken 36 minutes.
“I looked at that and I’m like, ‘36 minutes?’ It felt like we’d been
there for two hours at least,” said Tracy. “We just went into this weird
standstill and 36 minutes changed our lives, changed that man’s
34 TRUCKLOAD AUTHORITY | www.Truckload.org TCA 2020