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His first reaction wasn’t to call the police.
Instinct took over.
Retired Lincoln firefighter Mark Munger was on his way back to Lincoln from visiting his daughter in Des Moines on Friday. He had just stopped for gasoline and gotten back onto Interstate 80 on an unusually windy day.
The trailer hitched to a vehicle in front of him started to teeter. In a matter of seconds, the car swung dramatically to the left, and tumbled in seemingly endless loops until it plopped upside down on the median.
“It was the most violent thing I’ve seen in my life — and I’ve seen a lot of things,” Munger said.
While others called police, Munger could only think that he needed to get to the vehicle as fast as he could and help in any way he could.
Munger dodged debris — from warped, body-size pieces of what used to be the trailer’s side paneling to shattered glass — until he was finally able to pull his car onto the shoulder.
Then, he got out and ran.
Sprinting down the wrong way of the interstate to the wreckage 50 yards away, he realized that potentially more dangerous than the actual wreck could be oncoming traffic crashing into the scene. As he ran, he waved both arms in the air frantically, directing traffic out of the way.
He spent 35 years of his life doing this kind of thing. He might have retired six years ago, but all of his quick response instincts came back easily.
“It’s like riding a bicycle,” Munger said. “If you’re in the emergency services as a professional I don’t think you forget. To help people is just part of my psyche, my blood, my DNA. There’s no way that I could have not stopped.”
As he got closer to the wreckage, Munger scanned the ground for bodies that might have flown out. He didn’t see any and climbed to the driver’s side, got on his stomach in the snow and peered in the window.
“I could not believe people were still in the vehicle,” Munger said. “I thought I was running back to a car full of dead people.”
By then, more vehicles had pulled over. Munger could hear people yelling “Are they alive?”
Munger was able to pry the smashed car doors open and help the two children in the back get out. Next was their mom.
Much to Munger’s surprise, no one suffered any major injuries — just a few cuts and bruises.
Munger fashioned a sling out of his T-shirt for one of the girls who had a broken arm. Munger and the girls and their mom waited in another woman’s car to avoid the bitter cold.
To “calm the situation down,” Munger told them that as a firefighter he had seen things like this uncountable times.
Even though he had assisted people at all kinds of accidents in the past, this one in particular was one Munger hadn’t ever experienced.
“It was so different in the fact that I watched it all unfold right before my eyes rather than pulling up minutes after,” he said. “So to watch the crash in front of you is disconcerting.”
