Teens rescue family from burning van
Published: March 10, 2006
“Let’s roll!”
With that call to action, four McFarland High School seniors charged into a burning minivan Saturday afternoon and saved the lives of a mother and her two young children.
The dramatic rescue by Paul Thoresen, 17, Alex Hill, 18, Robert Johnson, 18, and Ryan Oldenburg, 18, took six minutes from the time Hill called 911 to report the accident to the time the Dodge Caravan burst into flames, eventually destroying it.
“We got them out and it burned a few minutes later,” Hill said. “It was extremely hectic.”
The four students were driving in two cars north on U.S. 51 near Voges Road north of the village, heading to Quaker Steak and Lube in Middleton for lunch Saturday afternoon.
Two cars ahead, a minivan suddenly careened off the highway, went through the snow and a fence and smashed into a tree.
As it happened, Hill called 911 on a cell phone and the others hopped out of their cars, heading to the accident scene.
The female driver “was struggling to get out of the van but she couldn’t,” Thoresen said. “The air bag had deployed and she was stuck behind it.”
Thoresen tried to get the sliding side door to open, but it was jammed because the minivan had literally wrapped around the tree. He kicked at it and was able to slide it open, while Johnson and Oldenburg were able to pop the back door up and get inside to help rescue the kids and mother.
Oldenburg yelled out information to Hill from inside the van, so Hill could tell the emergency dispatcher what was going on.
Meanwhile, other drivers had stopped their cars and were at the scene, but Johnson said most of the “older” people at the scene were more panic-stricken than anything.
“They kept screaming at us to get them out,” he said. “We just kept working at it.”
Sharon Strattan’s six-year-old daughter Brooke was sitting on the backseat, strapped in with the safety belt, while three-year-old Brandon was in a car seat, also strapped in.
Both children were shaken up but not badly injured. But time was running out, since thick, black smoke was pouring into the passenger compartment.
“The smoke was getting intense when we pulled the kids out,” Oldenburg said. “Then the whole thing went up in flames.”
The four students have had some first responder and lifesaving training, but they’d never been at the scene of a serious accident before.
“I’m glad we were in the right place at the right time,” Oldenburg said.
Strattan thinks so, too.
She was full of praise for the four high school students today, saying “we don’t think we’d be here if it wasn’t for those boys.”
Neither Strattan nor her two children were hospitalized for long after the accident. Brooke and Brandon are both doing well, Strattan said today, although she is recovering from some cracked vertebrae as a result of the crash. But she added that “considering what happened, it’s nothing to complain about.”
Due to a medical condition, Strattan blacked out before driving off the road and has no memory of the accident. In fact, it wasn’t until Wednesday that she learned the names of the rescuers from a television reporter. She called them all that evening to thank them.
Should they receive some kind of formal recognition for their efforts, Strattan said.
“I need to know about it because I want to be there and give them a standing ovation.”
The McFarland Police Department called the four students recently to say they are being nominated for a citizens’ award.
Police Chief Greg Leck said in a telephone interview that “I thought that they did an outstanding job and it’s a credit to the village to have individuals who would take action like that.”
Police and fire department personnel eventually showed up and took over at the accident scene Saturday. The young men made sure everything was OK, then hopped back in their cars and went to lunch.
“It was really good,” Hill said.
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