Five Hurt In Fire Truck Crash In Back Bay
BOSTON (CBS) -- Five people were injured after a fire engine crashed in Boston's Back Bay Monday morning, the Boston Fire Department said.
The crash happened around 11:35 a.m. Monday in the area of Dartmouth Street and Commonwealth Avenue.
The fire truck was responding to a report of smoke in a building, and had its lights and sirens on when it collided with a red SUV on Commonwealth Avenue.
That SUV had heavy front end damage visible at the scene.
Boston EMS confirmed that one captain and three firefighters were taken to Massachusetts General Hospital, and the driver of the car was taken to Tufts Medical Center.
Their injuries were non-life-threatening. All four of the firefighters had been released from the hospital by Monday night.
"I'm very relieved that nobody was seriously injured," said Boston Fire Commissioner Joseph Finn.
Uber driver David Berwick witnessed the crash. He heard a noise, and then the accident unfolded in front of him.
"Like a second later, almost instantly, it just absolutely crushed this car. It had to go 50 or 60 feet," Berwick said.
Berwick, who has medical training, jumped into action.
"As I went toward the car, the door opened, this gentleman got out and fell on his face," he said. "The fire truck was going very fast, it's filled with water, the momentum, the energy. It was an absolute clobber of the car."
Commissioner Finn added that he was not blaming the driver of the car for the crash at this time. Investigators are counting on traffic cameras nearby to fill in the holes, but they say they have a pretty good idea of what happened to cause the crash.
"It appeared the driver of the vehicle came out into the intersection," Finn said.
The crash caused the truck to jump onto the sidewalk, where it hit the cars parked along Commonwealth Avenue.
"It was just like a bomb went off and everything," witness John Ellis said. "Just one of those things like 'ok, please don't let this be another one of those incidents.'"
About nine of those cars smashed into one another in a chain reaction.
"You could hear it, bang, bang, bang, bang, right in a row," Ellis said.
A tree was also knocked down in the crash.
Lisa Simmons, whose car was hit in the crash, says she feels luck she wasn't in the wrong place at the wrong time like her car was.
"It's emotional, you thank God that nobody's in it," she said. "It's pretty intense."
One firefighter said the crash recalled a similar one a few years ago in which a firefighter died.
"God was one our side," he said.
Commonwealth Avenue had been closed off for a few blocks in both directions, but was reopened around 3 p.m.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Bernice Corpuz reports
