My first fatality

I was staying over my girlfriend's house and it was snowing heavily. The pager went off about 2:15 AM for reports of a jacknifed trailer on a major highway near her apartment, Route 17. I jumped in my front-wheel drive car and slipped and skidded my way to the firehouse. When I got there, we heard chatter on the radio about a possible fatality. I looked at my Lieutenant with a little bit of fear since I haven't seen one yet. We jumped on the engine very quietly and creeped our way through the snow and ice to the scene.

We parked the engine a little bit down the road and we could see the 18-wheeler that had spun out of control and was jacknifed with the rear of the cab smashed up against a huge concrete divider. It was still very dark so we took some hand-lights and started approaching. The chief called us on the radio that there was no spill therefore no need for any speedy-dry.

As we got closer to the trailer we got better visibility and the windshield was totally knocked out and I could start to see that the driver was hanging out of the front of the cab. Closing in even more, it was evident to me that the top of his head was partially severed and some of its contents had spilled onto the snow in front of the truck. I looked at my Lieutenant and said "...is that what I think it is?" and he said "Yup. Stay with me."

As we walked up to the trailer we confirmed what we thought. He was dead on impact and his head was indeed busted open and its contents were partially exposed. A few of us stood there for a few seconds looking before my Lieutenant told us to go back by the Engine since there was no longer anything we could do. No stabilization of the vehicle was necessary since it was pinned up against the column and there was no extrication to be made until a coroner could get on location, which they said could be several hours. About an hour later we were sent back to the firehouse while the Chief and Police waited for the coroner.

I didn't sleep the rest of that night and images kept popping in my head of what I saw. I called another fireman the next day and talked for about an hour about it. I thought I was the only one affected until we had a meeting at the firehouse the following night to discuss the events. A special trauma team came in to talk to us a few nights later, and they encouraged us to talk more amongst eachother and not to act like tough-guys and bottle the emotions in.

Very difficult to see things like this, whether one has already seen it or if it's just the first time.