Nurse heading to work offers aid

Helped driver trapped in seat

Michael Ferchak was crossing Huntington Avenue yesterday afternoon when he heard a long and loud fire horn coming down Parker Hill Avenue behind him. When the intensive care nurse turned to look, he said, he saw a Boston Fire Department ladder truck speed through the intersection, plow through parked cars, shatter an outer brick wall, and smash into the side of an apartment building.

Then he heard children screaming.

"I knew it wasn't going to be good," said Ferchak, who was headed to his 3 p.m. shift at Brigham and Women's Hospital but instead sprinted to the site of the crash. "I had no idea what I was getting into, but I just - especially hearing the kids, you had to get in there."

The front half of the truck's cab had plunged into the building. Before the 37-year-old could climb through the jagged hole in the wall, he said, he saw a firefighter who appeared to be trapped in the rear of the cab, behind the driver.

"[He] was banging on the window. He couldn't get out," said Ferchak, who was able to open the door and release the firefighter. Then Ferchak scrambled into the building, toward the screams, thinking there might be bodies on the floor, he said. He saw only shattered bricks and broken glass - "it was a mess, it was a real mess," he said.

"I didn't see anything, so I turned my attention back to the firetruck, and when I did that I could see that the passenger in the truck was motionless, but the driver was slumped out over, through the front of the truck, and still holding onto the wheel," Ferchak said. "There was sort of like a waterfall coming down all over him, and he wasn't conscious, and he was gurgling."

Fire Lieutenant Kevin M. Kelley, who was seated in the passenger seat, died in the crash.

Ferchak described how the truck's windshield was gone, and the driver was hunched over the wheel and leaning through the front of the cab, though he remained trapped in the seat. Realizing he would not be able to free the driver safely, Ferchak instead leaned through the empty windshield and used his left hand to push up on the unconscious driver's chest and press him back to keep him from drowning in the torrent of water. He initially thought the water was coming from the truck, but it was flowing from a burst building pipe.

"I was getting completely doused with water for I don't know how long. I held him up long enough that he started to come to," said Ferchak, who asked that his hometown not be identified. "After maybe two or three minutes he started to regain consciousness, and I tried to calm him down so he wouldn't hurt himself any more than he already was."

Ferchak said he remained there, water pouring on top of him, the frigid air blowing in through the gaping side of the building, until firefighters arrived. "I got out of the way and let them do their work," said Ferchak, who headed to Brigham and Women's, where he changed his clothes and was examined by an emergency room doctor. He was unharmed and went back home.

Speaking by phone last night, Ferchak sounded slightly dazed, and he downplayed his role as a first responder. "I'm a little overwhelmed by it all," he said. "I just think it was an instinctual thing to help."