A few years ago, 53-year-old John Rodrigue bought a mini fire extinguisher—the kind available in any Home Depot—thinking it was “a good idea to have [it around].”
Even so, it was a little surreal when the Corral Canyon resident grabbed the extinguisher while responding to the scene of a traffic collision, where a truck—emitting heavy smoke from the engine—was overturned. (This, perhaps, was lucky for the victim; Rodrigue is a board member of the Corral Canyon Fire Safety Alliance.)
Last Wednesday, March 7, the collision forced a full closure on Kanan Dume Road, from Pacific Coast Highway to Mulholland Highway. A spokesperson for the Lost Hills/Malibu Sheriff’s Department said the call came in at 9:43 a.m.
Rodrigue, who spoke to The Malibu Times in a phone call, said he was the second person on the scene.
“The truck was coming west down the hill,” he described. “It turned over, took out a power pole [and] went off the road, to the right.”
Extinguisher in hand, he jumped over the downed power lines to access the cab of the truck.
On reflection, he thought the idea “probably wasn’t too smart.”
That’s because one of the wires was hot, as confirmed by the sheriff’s department.
“I don’t know how any of us survived,” Rodrigue said.
After extinguishing the engine flames, Rodrigue and two other men who had arrived on scene went to rescue the driver.
“The driver was unconscious, wedged behind the steering wheel,” he said, adding that the driver was bleeding from wounds in his arm and head.
Since the back window of the cab was shattered, the men used that as a way to pull the victim out.
Once safely removed, the driver had his right wrist bound with a sweatshirt as a makeshift tourniquet.
Los Angeles Fire Department Engine 71 responded to the scene, along with ambulance, California Highway Patrol and sheriff deputies.
After securing the driver’s neck, the ambulance drove off to a nearby hospital. Rodrigue said the victim was “kind of conscious” at the time.
Meanwhile, fire personnel finished off any fire left near the truck’s engine.
He said the truck was “towing one big trailer full of asphalt,” describing the vehicle as “18-wheeler size.”
“I was thinking ‘This is a really big truck on Kanan,’” he said of his immediate thoughts during the rescue.
And he’s not wrong.
Detective Huelson of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said the truck was “way above” the weight and axle limit for Kanan Dume Road.
According to the Malibu General Plan, “vehicles of weight over 8,000 lbs. or over two axles are not allowed on Kanan Dume Road.”
Sheriff’s spokespeople were able to verify many details of the accident, but were not available to confirm Rodrigue’s full account of what happened.
The road was reopened closer to midnight March 7, following repairs by Southern California Edison. Huelson could not provide further information as to why the truck was on the road at the time of the collision.
