A burning vehicle, a man crying out for help, and only a split second to make a decision.
That’s the situation that confronted Comer’s Brian Fortson as he and his wife, Kelly, traveled to see her father at a retirement home in Winterville on the afternoon of Saturday, Dec. 10.
Greg Pierce, of Danielsville, had finished up his work as a truck driver for Triple H Transport and was heading back to his home office in Maysville when he somehow lost control of his tractor-trailer on Hwy. 22 near Comer in Oglethorpe County.
“I remember coming down the hill and I guess I ran off (the edge) of the road,” he said. The truck and 53-foot empty trailer careened off the road and hit a ditch, then went back across the road and into some woods. The impact caused the cab to catch fire.
Pierce’s wife, Gail, said her husband has had a fear of fire since he suffered second-degree burns in a gasoline fire accident while doing yard work a few years ago.
So when Pierce saw that the cab was on fire, he knew he was living his worst nightmare. “All I could do was scream, ‘don’t let me burn,’ I couldn’t get out,” he said.
David Rice, of Comer, who declined The Journal’s request for an interview, was already on scene when the Fortsons came along.
“We usually don’t go that way, but for some reason, we did that day,” Fortson said.
The Fortsons spotted the wreck, saw the burning truck and Rice at the scene.
“I told Kelly, I’ve got to see what I can do,” Fortson said.
He jumped out and ran down to the cab, where Rice had retrieved a tire tool from his vehicle and was working to break the driver’s side window. After the window broke, the men could see Pierce standing up between the seats, leaning toward the windshield.
“He said, ‘how are ya’ll going to get me out?” Fortson remembers. “And I said, you just come on through and let us worry about that.”
Fortson, who weighs about 160 pounds, said he and Rice were of a similar size, while Pierce was heavier, but they managed to pull him out and drag him away from the burning cab, which quickly became engulfed.
Fortson said having worked on vehicles, that he knew that the diesel fuel would not explode, but the heat of the fire was intense.
“The tires did explode and we jumped every time,” he said. They continued to drag Pierce - whose face was covered in blood, through the recently clear-cut wooded area until they were 25 or so feet away.
“He kept hollering about his leg, but we couldn’t see anything, just the blood on his face,” Fortson said.
Pierce said he remembers telling them, “please don’t leave me alone.”
“I don’t know who it was, but they said, ‘we’re not going to leave you,’” Pierce said. “They were angels, they saved my life that day.”
Fortson said he and Rice didn’t know that Pierce’s leg was broken until paramedics cut away his pants and they could see the bone protruding.
“We didn’t talk to each other,” Fortson said of his experience with Rice. “There wasn’t time.”
After Oglethorpe EMS arrived, a medical helicopter from Greenville was summoned and Pierce was air-lifted to a South Carolina hospital. Fortson said he sent his wife on to her father and stayed with Pierce at the scene until he was air-lifted and taken to a hospital in South Carolina.
“I was OK until I got home, and then I couldn’t sleep at all that night,” Fortson said of the experience. “There was no truck left; it just melted the cab.”
Mrs. Pierce said she first received information that her husband’s truck “had exploded” and that he had been airlifted. She didn’t know where he had been taken, or what condition he was in.
“I was truthfully expecting the worst,” she said.
When she and the couple’s three children arrived at the hospital, she was just so grateful that he was alive. Besides a broken leg, Pierce suffered four broken ribs and head trauma. He spent four days in ICU and was released later that week.
Fortson called the office of Triple H Transport on Monday to see if he could find out anything about how Pierce was doing. He talked with Todd Highland, owner of the trucking company, who updated him on Pierce’s condition and expressed his gratitude. Pierce has worked for the company for the past 11 years.
Mrs. Pierce called both Fortson and Rice to thank them for saving her husband’s life.
Since then, the Pierce and Fortson families, thanks to their kids, have “friended” each other on Facebook, where they have kept up with Greg’s progress and gotten to know each other better.
The families met for the first time face-to-face on Dec. 30 in Danielsville.
“I know you don’t want recognition, but you’re my superman,” Pierce told Fortson at that meeting. Pierce said he is also so thankful that no one else was involved in the accident.
For Fortson’s part, he feels he was there that day for a reason.
“We were there and I did what I had to do,” he said. “I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”
".... there are people around me that think about others ...."
While these statements are nice, I cannot imagine anyone I know who would not be totally complelled to stop and offer help upon seeing a burning vehicle or a car on a railroad track. It would take an really unusual and rare human being to not stop. Now, forcing one's self to endure heat to pull someone out of a vehicle takes courage, yes! Knowing the fuel won't explode helps tremendously. I appreciate that no one has used the word "hero" here; these rescuers did what was obvious without panicking. David Rice and Brian Fortson may not have been heros, but they sure were cool(headed) dudes!