(CNN) – It’s been more than five weeks since Atlanta Police Sgt. Ryan Heald and Officer Tyler Thomas stared into a 40-foot wall of flame and thick black smoke that filled the five-lane interstate highway bridge in front of them.
Somehow, in the middle of a Thursday rush hour on March 30, a critical transportation artery in one of America’s most traffic-challenged cities had caught fire.
They had raced toward the fire from a nearby location after hearing frantic police radio chatter. “I could tell right away from the first officers that were witnessing the fire, I could tell from their voices on the radio, that it was getting out of control,” Heald said.
Heald and Tyler quickly accessed the situation: Firefighters had been called but had not yet arrived. Traffic was steadily stacking up in both directions on both sides of the bridge. Traffic had to be stopped immediately.
Although police had already shut down traffic closest to them, Heald and Thomas knew that to completely stop traffic, they had to figure a way to get through the wall of fire to the other side.
“I told my officer to drive as fast as you can through these flames cause it’s going to be hot,” recalled Heald. Tyler hit the accelerator and sent the patrol car hurtling through the firewall. “And for a second and a half, I felt that heat … it was unbelievably hot.”
When they emerged on the other side, they could see flames billowing all the way up from the ground and over the sides of the highway bridge. Flames were so out of control they were flowing onto the adjacent bridge where traffic was also stacking up heading the opposite direction.
