Friday, August 20, 2004
By Joe Fahy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Two Coraopolis girls suffered severe head injuries yesterday when they were struck by a fire hose that apparently came loose from a truck as firefighters responded to a nearby house fire.
Bill Wade, Post-Gazet
Erin Schmidt and Joey Jeffress, both 10, were standing on the sidewalk in the 500 block of Mount Vernon Avenue when a truck from the Coraopolis Volunteer Fire Department passed by and they were injured by the hose’s nozzle. Erin was in critical condition and Joey in serious condition last night at Children’s Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Coraopolis Fire Chief Larry Byrge said four firefighters and a driver were in the cab of the pumper truck, which was heading to a fire in the 400 block of Mount Vernon about 2:30 p.m. He said the firefighters had on air masks and the truck’s siren was blaring. They did not notice that the hose had come loose and was whipping around. “It’s a very unfortunate accident, very tragic,” he said, saying firefighters on the pumper only learned of the injured girls after they extinguished the fire. The fire began in a dryer of the home and no one was injured, he said. Byrge said he had no idea how the hose, stored in an open box mounted on the side of the truck, came loose. He said hoses are typically folded and stored in the boxes and that the department has never had one come loose before. The nozzle, much larger than one on a garden hose, weighs several pounds. Allegheny County homicide detectives were investigating. Neighbors said the accident occurred as the girls were standing in front of Erin’s home on the sidewalk with her mother, who suffered minor injuries. Sarah Long, 21, said she was sitting on her fiance’s porch steps next door to Erin’s home when she saw the truck head up Chess Street, then turn right on Mount Vernon. She said she saw a hose trailing out of the truck get caught underneath a parked car, lifting it slightly, and strike some bushes and a birdbath before it passed by, barely missing her. She said she heard screams and then saw the two injured children on the ground. “When I saw it was unraveling, it was like, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” she said. “There was no way they could have gotten out of the way.” Her fiance, Jason Coley, 20, said he saw the hose nozzle strike both children and called 911. Moments before the accident, Long said, Erin’s mother called to the children, who had been at the corner as the siren sounded. She told them to move back as the fire truck passed, Long said. Sophie Spencer, who also lives in the 500 block of Mount Vernon, said she was sitting on her front porch when she saw the truck round the corner. The dangling hose caught on her car, lifting it up, knocked over a pot of flowers and broke the pedestal of her concrete birdbath in two before it injured the children, she said. Spencer said Erin and Joey, who lives a block away on Seventh Avenue, are close friends. “This has just devastated us,” she said as rain poured outside her home last evening. “It was a nice afternoon; the kids were out. If it had been raining like this, they would have been inside.” Neighbors said Erin lives with her mother and older sister and that both she and Joey attend Cornell Elementary School. Mary Lee Smith, 55, who lives across the street from the Jeffress family, said Joey has an older sister and brother. “We’re just totally devastated,” she said of the accident. “I can’t believe what’s happened.”