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Logger rescued thanks to Austintown Fire Department's Hummer
By ROBERT CONNELLY
AUSTINTOWN
Bill Spithaler kept telling 911 dispatch that it needed to send a helicopter to help him.
“This is a helicopter ride out of here. There is nothing a fire department has that can get me out of here,” the 48-year-old recalled.
He was deep in the woods at a logging site near Raccoon Road and Four Mile Run on Feb. 6, and he was suffering a serious asthma attack while working in 10 inches of snow.
Spithaler, a former firefighter for Gustavus Township, recalled that there was an equipment fire in the woods that he helped to put out with two fire extinguishers and snow. But he inhaled some of the smoke.
“I put the fire out, and after I came off the adrenaline rush, with it being 8 or 10 degrees that day, I started going into a major attack,” the Farmdale resident recalled. “Of course, the [asthma medication] inhalers weren’t working.”
That’s when Austintown police, with some officers familiar with the logging site, the Austintown Fire Department and Lane EMS were called in.
The vehicles could go only so far — the fire department’s sport utility vehicle made it only to the end of a gas well road — and Spithaler was still farther back.
Walt Donitzen, driving the fire department’s Hummer, kept an eye out for patches where the snow was a little elevated, trying to avoid 2-foot-high stumps. As he navigated the rough terrain of the logging site, time was ticking for Spithaler.
If it hadn’t been for that 1992 Hummer, acquired last year by Austintown fire officials, Spithaler might not have made it out.
“That’s what that is made for,” Donitzen said of the Hummer.
The firefighter recalled snow drifts of 5 to 6 feet high with tree stumps and branches hidden by white. Austintown fire officials credit the way Hummers are designed, with the parts higher off the ground than other vehicles, for why Donitzen was able to plow through debris.
Donitzen recalls bottoming out in the Hummer, most likely when a hole was punched in the gas tank, and beginning to smell diesel fuel. He estimated that Spithaler was 4 miles off the road.
Lane EMS paramedics had walked back to help the man, but the Hummer was needed to get him out quickly.
The Hummer, though leaking fuel, was able to get Spithaler loaded up and back to the SUV, and he was transported to an area hospital. In fact, Spithaler is back to logging already and has visited the Austintown firefighters three times since that day.
The old 1960s-era Jeeps that were exchanged for the Hummer last year would not have done the job. “We had no idea how great they were until that call,” said Fire Chief Andy Frost III.
The fire department received the call at 11:17 a.m. Feb. 6, and was able to get to the site off Carlin Drive about seven minutes later. The last township vehicle to leave the scene was at 3:20 p.m. that day.
Frost said the department has used the Hummer a handful of times since receiving a grant last year, mostly for grass fires and tough terrain. Austintown police assisted the township fire department with paperwork for the federal government’s military surplus stock. The department spent $9,000 outfitting the vehicle last year and had assistance from several Austintown businesses with free materials and work time.
“When the snow was starting to melt that Sunday I went back to see where they drove through that stuff. I still can’t believe they got it back to where they got it,” Spithaler said of the ruts and stumps Donitzen had plowed through to get to him. “But they got me out.”
“Those guys — they went over and beyond,” Spithaler said.