Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05
May 15, 2008 issue
Story by Bernadette Cahill
Two High Country men received Medals of Valor in Washington, D.C. this week for their bravery while saving lives during a horrific truck wreck on Interstate 81 last fall.
Supervisory Parkway Ranger David G. Bauer and Parkway Ranger Eddy Cartaya, who work on the Blue Ridge Parkway and live in Boone, were among 19 National Park Service honorees who received the medal from Secretary Dirk Kempthorne at the Department of the Interior on Tuesday afternoon.
The citations from the department state that the two men received the medals “in recognition of [their] exceptional valor during rescue actions resulting in the saving of human lives while repeatedly placing [themselves] in danger to [their] own life.”
Last September 14, Bauer and Cartaya were in Virginia, traveling home from a training conference, when they stopped for gas and heard about the wreck further south on Interstate 81. While crossing the interstate, “there was this big fiery mushroom cloud in the northbound lane and then multiple explosions and cars flying in the air,” said Cartaya.
The accident occurred after a storm and, on the wet road, a car carrier “had lost control or couldn’t stop and rode drove over a bunch of cars,” he said.
The two rangers, in their patrol car but only in casual uniforms, drove down the off-ramp on the north side of the interstate and found themselves in the middle of something like a war zone.
Cartaya worked on one side of the accident to free an injured man pinned by his steering wheel in his car, which was crushed by the cab of the truck. A fire was working its way towards the vehicle and “there were gas tanks popping off everywhere. It was like gunshot and you could feel this rush of heat,” Cartaya said.
With the help of others who had come forward, Cartaya cleared broken window glass with his bare hands, stabilized the injured man and finally got him out to safety. During the rescue, he and the others worked under the threat of the approaching fire. Cartaya actually gave orders to those with fire extinguishers to “put them out” if he and other rescuers caught fire, and twice they had to suspend work because the fire was burning so fiercely. The fire ultimately destroyed the man’s car.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the accident, Bauer was working on rescuing a woman trapped in a vehicle with a full-size SUV suspended over it. The fire underneath the car was so intense that it forced Bauer and the other rescuers to retreat, and they could hear the woman scream, “I’m on fire, I’m on fire.”
When finally they managed to cut the car open, Bauer gave oxygen and stabilized the injured woman. Cartaya also helped inside the car, first of all by protecting the ones working with the injured woman from metal and flying glass and then, because he was the only one small enough to get into the space, by freeing her trapped ankle.
The rescue of the woman “took forever. We cut the vehicle into a million pieces,” Cartaya said.
Throughout the rescue, both men heard more than a dozen explosions, but kept on working.
“It’s what we are trained to do and we tried to be as safe as we could be when working to free [the injured people],” said Bauer.
“We were pretty shook up by it,” said Cartaya. “We thought we were going to watch [the woman] burn to death. It’s hard to drive after that.”
Cartaya said he’s worked probably 1,000 wrecks, but had never seen anything like that one. Because of the actions of the two men, no one died in the accident.
When the incident was over, the rangers went to a gas station, called their wives, eventually drove home and took the next day off.
They heard about the award about three weeks ago. Bauer took his wife Kathy and Cartaya took his wife Linda Barnes to the award ceremony.