Spectators cheer as driver rescued from car crash in 40-minute struggle
Spectators cheered and clapped in the gathering gloom and chill Wednesday evening as London police and firefighters, using the “jaws of life,” freed a driver from his mangled car after a 40-minute struggle on Wharncliffe Road North.
The driver was conscious and talking to his rescuers as they eased him on to a stretcher and whisked him in a Thames Valley ambulance to Victoria Hospital.
Police identified the driver as 19-year old University of Western Ontario student James Andrew Kost of 17 Emery Street West. He suffered a broken left wrist, broken right ankle and cuts to both arms. A Victoria Hospital spokesman listed his condition Wednesday night as fair.
The impact left the small foreign- model car literally wrapped around a hydro pole on the west side of Wharncliffe near Lexington Avenue.
“It’s a total wreck,” said investigating London police Const. Colin Webster, who said Kost lost control while attempting to overtake a slower vehicle and plowed into the pole at about 6:25 p.m. Pieces of the car landed about 10 metres away.
“He was in quite a predicament,” said rescue unit No 1 Capt. Bernie Larkin. “He was straddling the hydro pole. If the car had traveled another six inches the pole would have cut him in two.”
Larkin said the car was so badly crumpled, “we couldn’t see what was pinning him down because of all the wreckage hanging down. We had to work by inches.”
Wharncliffe Road traffic was diverted around the accident scene for about an hour during the rescue and subsequent cleanup.
Barry Ward of 139 Wharncliffe said he was in his living room when he heard the car crunch the pole directly across the street.
“I was out here in about 10 seconds. I talked to the driver and he seemed in good spirits,” Ward said. He called Thames Valley Ambulance while “a girl who lives across the street brought the driver a blanket.”
More than 200 persons, attracted by the galaxy of flashing lights on police cruisers and emergency vehicles, shivered and stamped while rescuers used the hydraulic-powered “jaws of life” to shear off the driver’s side of the car and bend it up like the lid on a cardboard box.
Hovering over the action was Dr. G. E. Pratt of 237 Commissioners Rd. E. who arrived on the scene seconds after the crash.
“He’s doing a good job,” said Webster as Pratt watched closely while Kost was eased out of the wreck.
Pratt, in turn, had high praise for Larkin’s rescue unit crew.
“They did an excellent job,” he said.
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