FORT WORTH, TX — On February 11, Trey McDaniel took a ride to work that would redefine his career as a lifesaver, because not only would he be saving others that day, he’d have to save himself.
That morning, McDaniel took the same route he always did: driving down the express lanes of Interstate 35W toward the MedStar headquarters in Fort Worth where he works as an EMT. However, this morning was one of those rare North Texas mornings where light overnight precipitation combined with freezing temperatures to coat the grounds and roads in a thin layer of ice.
A thin layer of ice would be all it would take to cause a historic tragedy.
McDaniel recalls coming over the hill overpass on 35W right before Northside Drive and seeing a sight on the roadway in front of him that left the EMT speechless.
“In front of me was a pileup of vehicles and trucks,” said McDaniel.
He says he had space to slow to a stop just before colliding with the pileup himself as he saw other vehicle slide past him, unable to gain traction, and into the wreck. McDaniel only had a brief moment to process what was happening though because his ability to avoid a collision wouldn’t be enough on this day.
“I looked up in my rearview mirror and I noticed a semi-truck,” said McDaniel, pausing as he recalled the horror of the moment. “I just kind of looked down and braced for impact.”
McDaniel says the semi hit his vehicle from behind sending his car into the pileup in front of him and eventually airborne and out of the confines of the southbound express lane.
“Launched into the air, doing a full rotation rollover into the northbound lanes into the opposite side of the toll road,” said McDaniel. “My vehicle was almost unrecognizable after.”
It’s about that time that 911 calls started to flood Fort Worth dispatchers. Fort Worth police just made public more than two hours of calls that came in one on top of another. Many of the initial calls came from passersby who witnessed the initial crashes in the pileup and called to get help for the people involved.
As the pileup grew though, the calls came in frantically from people caught in that accident. Some told dispatchers they were pinned in their vehicles and couldn’t escape, others frantically reported injuries and begged the operators on the other end to send help, some of the most chilling calls though came via safety systems that automatically dialed 911 upon the collision - and operators answered only to hear the sound of cars crashing on the other end, but no voice answering in the car.
6 people would die from their injuries in that pileup that eventually involved 133 vehicles including several semis.
McDaniel said his vehicle, in areal pictures of the crash, seemed to be the only one that actually flew out of its lane and into the neighboring lanes, but luckily it also landed tires down. He said as he gained his bearings, he initially when through a mental checklist of his body to see how he’d faired the crash. Truly, he says he had much more severe injuries that adrenaline would let him find in those moments, but feeling able at the time, McDaniel said he crawled his way out of the wreckage of his vehicle and did what he does: got to saving lives.
“I started helping other people that were involved, I started knocking on doors,” said McDaniel. “I helped carry a lady that was injured across the lanes.”
Eventually, McDaniel said he saw a beacon of hope enter the scene of the pileup as his fellow MedStar EMTs and other emergency workers started to arrive on the scene. By the hundreds, those life savers got to work that morning pulling trapped Texans out of cars and getting them to local hospitals for help. Many lives were saved that day, including McDaniel’s.
McDaniel, in the weeks that followed, would be honored for his actions that day by Toyota whose representatives heard his story and sent him a brand new vehicle to replace the FJ Cruiser he lost in that crash, the car he credits with protecting him as he became involved in that pileup.
Now, more than a month and a half later, McDaniel returned to work at MedStar.
“Mentally it’s taken its toll,” he admitted, saying that he hasn’t driven that stretch of 35W since.
McDaniel says he’s glad to get back to doing what he loves though, a job that he says gave him the opportunity to act that day that he may have been needed more than ever.
At last check, the 35W pileup remains under investigation by the Fort Worth Police and the NTSB.