Gore District (Nova Scotia) Volunteer Fire Department Jeff Ettinger escaped serious injury Sunday when he rolled the department’s main tanker pumper in a ditch and struck a utility pole. Ettinger was the rig’s only occupant.
“My husband left as the lone person in our pumper tanker to go for water shuttle and when he was on his route he hit a wall of fog and lost sight of the road and … he thought he was on one part of the road and felt the truck drop off the shoulder of the road,” Markitia Ettinger told the Hants Journal. She is the department’s treasurer. “The fog cleared, he realized where he was, went to correct the truck, the load shifted and there was nothing he could do.”
The 1991 truck is a total loss. Two neighboring departments offered spare apparatus until the Gore District can settle with its insurance company and get a new rig.
“My husband and I have come to the realization that I was almost a widow,” she said. “Once we got some of our members there … I transported him in my own personal vehicle to the Hants Community Hospital. He did refuse ambulance because he knew that the ambulance was needed on the scene in Kennetcook.”