LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- As the semi-truck hung off the side of the 2nd Street Bridge last week, many wondered how crews would get it off.
WDRB News spoke with the tow truck operators involved and they took us through the painstaking process to explain how training and experience paid off.
A look at the semitruck being towed up from the side of the 2nd Street Bridge after two cars, a pickup truck and semitruck crashed, leaving the semitruck dangling over the edge of the bridge. (Photo courtesy of Suburban Towing on Facebook)
Justin Schaffer said it was "a scene from an action movie."
"It was just a crazy scene, something that did not look real," Schaffer said.
But reality soon set in for the Suburban Towing crew who were called in after a dramatic rescue of the driver trapped inside.
A semitruck broke through the western barrier of the bridge and partially dangled over the Ohio River after a 4-vehicle crash.
"If that trailer had not hit the top of that bridge, that truck would've been in the river, no two ways about it," Schaffer said.
The towing crew spent about 10 hours on scene with three trucks, three operators and one supervisor. The crew of Schaffer, Jim Knight, Jeff Edwards and Stanton Stanley devised a plan, completed all the rigging and started lifting.
"We inserted what we call a slingshot method to lift the front of the trailer straight up," Schaffer said.
And the stakes were high.
"So we're putting our trucks outside 10- or 15-feet, we're trying to recover things that are jammed into a bridge," Knight said. "If something pops loose, the inertia inside that trailer shifting could pull everything off that bridge."
The team said it was their training and experience that led to success.
"The four of us combined have over a 100 years of experience and that played a major role," Schaffer said.
"It took all that combined years of on the job training, essentially, to find out the best way to do it to not do anymore damage and to make sure everybody goes home OK," Knight said.
It's a day they won't soon forget and an experience that is difficult to explain.
"You'll never run across this ever again," Edwards said. "This is once in a lifetime."
"I can't explain it, it's a higher power," Schaffer said. "It's the good lord above that made everything possible that day."
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