Canada: Alberta Fire Truck Struck on Highway

Jason Dyck’s full-time job is working on his farm near Carstairs, Alta., but it was his volunteer firefighter work that nearly got him killed on Monday.

“My head is such a blur right now,” Dyck said on Tuesday. “I’m happy to be alive and I’m happy that nobody got seriously injured.”

Dyck was standing outside his fire truck after responding to a crash on Highway 2 near Carstairs.

That’s when an SUV drove by and slammed into the back end of the fire truck. Five people inside the fire truck were injured, including another firefighter with the Carstairs Fire Department, a tow truck operator and three people who had been involved in the initial collision. They all suffered minor injuries.

Dyck said he only had a few seconds to react when he noticed the SUV hurtling towards him.

“It was so fast that I had enough time to yell at my guys to tell them to brace for impact and that was about it. Our fire truck went off to my left and debris from the other car went off to the right,” he said.

“At that point in time it was more of, ‘Where am I going to go? Where am I going to go to make sure I don’t get hit?’ I was more worried about my guys in my vehicle being hit. At that point in time I knew I was going to get hit. There was nothing I could do other than make sure they kind of knew that they were about to get hit. They didn’t see anything coming.”