SANDUSKY COUNTY, Ohio — The Sandusky County EMS received a state award Friday for their response to a deadly 50-car pileup on the turnpike last December.
"On this day, you couldn't ask for a worse hand to be dealt when it comes to weather conditions," Sandusky County EMS Chief Jeff Jackson said.
On Dec. 23 when the first call came in about a large accident on the Ohio Turnpike, Sandusky County EMS was among the first to respond. Chief Jackson said it was unclear from the 911 calls just how bad the incident was until he arrived on scene.
"It was because the people who called 911 on their phones that were involved were being crashed into," Jackson said.
Chief Jackson said he was able to approach the scene from the east. But many of the other first responders came from the west, and had to get out of their vehicles and had to carry their gear to the accident scene.
"I think we hiked, I'm going to guess, about 2 miles from where we had to stage the squad to walk up to where the accident was. That's how far the traffic was backed up," said Jeff Chapman, a 15-year EMS veteran.
In -3 degree weather with a wind chill of -34, and wind gusts up to 50 mph, these first responders were fighting to stand up while trying to find a way to extricate the 73 injured people trapped in their cars.
Some were buried under multiple vehicles.
"So we had to use a hydraulic tow truck to pick up the one truck to get underneath there, tunnel into the vehicle," Chief Jackson said. "The roof line was smashed down to the seats."
"We had to deal with batteries freezing, and the hydraulics getting thick so that the jaws of life were difficult to work with. It was just crazy," Chapman said.
The Sandusky County EMS crew spent six hours at the crash scene.
"It's kind of the big picture, you know we're there to help and it just goes by so fast," Chapman said. "You don't really realize how cold it is or how miserable the conditions can be until after it's over and you get to decompress a little bit. And then you realize the magnitude of what it was."
Because of their actions at the crash scene, the Ohio Department of Public Safety and others awarded the Sandusky County EMS with the EMS Star of Life Award.
These career first responders are grateful for the recognition, but said despite the difficult conditions, it was just another day of serving their community.
"As far as I'm concerned, I was just doing my job," Chapman. "I didn't do anything spectacular. None of us out there, I don't think, did anything outside of the ordinary other than doing our jobs and doing the best that we could with the conditions that we were in."
RELATED VIDEO