Two Southern California counties are sending firefighting crews to Orange County after eight firefighters there were injured in a crash along State Route 241, most of them remaining hospitalized.
About three dozen firefighters from Ventura and Santa Barbara counties will be going down to Orange County to help battle the Airport Fire , the destructive blaze that’s destroyed homes and injured several people as it burned through Orange and Riverside counties. The O.C. firefighters were coming back from a 12-hour shift fighting the wildfire when the crash happened Thursday night.
The fire truck had swerved to avoid a ladder in the middle of the freeway and then collided into a guardrail and rolled over, according to California Highway Patrol. One of the firefighters was airlifted and the rest were rushed to nearby trauma centers by ambulance.
On Friday morning, six of them were still hospitalized, OCFA Chief Brian Hennessey said, one of them in critical condition. “Many of the injured are going to be hospitalized for quite a while,” he said.