It was an explosive crash the drivers were lucky to walk away from. On June 2, a Ford F-150 crashed into a Habersham County fire truck that pulled in front of it. The wreck totaled the pickup and caused extensive damage to the fire truck.
Video obtained by Now Habersham through an open records request shows the moment the collision occurred. It was directly in front of Habersham County Fire Station 14 on Camp Creek Road in Mt. Airy.
Surveillance cameras captured the moment the vehicles collided and burst into flames.
In the video, the driver of the pickup truck, George Hames, can be seen jumping out of the truck. He rushes to the side of the road, away from the burning vehicles. Hames raises his hands into the air as if in disbelief while a medic in the station parking lot across the road calls to him.
As the flames die down, the firefighter who was driving, David Thompson, exits the burning engine. He and another firefighter, identified in the incident report as Lt. Joshua Eaton, pull extinguishers from the fire truck and begin dousing the flames with water and dry chemicals.
Hames walks to the station parking lot, where medics usher him into the ambulance to assess his condition. Neither he nor Thompson were injured. Both refused to be transported to the hospital, according to the report.
The Georgia State Patrol trooper who investigated the wreck issued Thompson a warning. He also received a written reprimand from his supervisor and was suspended without pay for two days for causing the accident. Thompson was also ordered to attend 24 hours of defensive driving classes.
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