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3 Killed, 3 Injured in Fiery Freeway Crash

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TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Three people died and three were hurt Monday morning in a fiery collision of a motor home carrying a family from Canada and a tractor-trailer rig hauling 50,000 pounds of tomatoes on a Burbank freeway.

The 10:45 a.m. accident--which California Highway Patrol investigators believe was caused by a pickup truck that made an unsafe lane change and struck the motor home--forced closure of both sides of the Golden State Freeway for about an hour and all southbound lanes for more than five hours.

The CHP was seeking the driver of the white pickup truck, who did not stop. The truck apparently was heavily damaged on its right side, officers said.

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A British Columbia couple and their daughter who were on their way to Disneyland were killed when their 30-foot motor home and the big rig pulling two trailers of tomatoes collided in the southbound lanes, then careened off the freeway into the concrete bridge abutment below the Burbank Boulevard overpass. The motor home was crushed and burst into flames.

A teen-age boy in the motor home was rescued by two off-duty Los Angeles firefighters who arrived moments after the collision. M. W. Johnson, battalion chief of the Burbank Fire Department, said the two firefighters, Greg Gilchrist, 31, and George Duarte, 30, pulled 14-year-old Gaben Sweezie out of the wreckage but were unable to save the other family members.

The two firefighters also rescued the driver of the truck, Lothlin M. Braziel, 41, of Porterville. He and Kelly Waisanen, a 15-year-old Sacramento girl who was in a car that was sideswiped during the accident, were treated at Burbank Community Hospital for minor injuries and released.

Gaben Sweezie suffered second- and third-degree burns over 80% to 90% of his body and was in critical but stable condition at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles.

Names of the three members of the boy’s family killed in the accident were not released immediately.

CHP Sgt. Mike Brey said the small, possibly foreign-made pickup was in the fast lane and apparently changed lanes in front of the motor home and hit the front end of the boxlike vehicle.

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“The motor home then went to the right and hit the tractor-trailer, and the impact then ignited the motor home,” Brey said. “Together they hit the bridge abutment.”

The truck rig jackknifed, spilling about half of its load of tomatoes onto the freeway. Fire from the wreckage spread to brush on the hillside next to the freeway, but the flames were quickly extinguished after firefighters arrived.

The CHP closed all lanes of the freeway while a helicopter landed to take the injured boy to the hospital and Burbank firefighters worked to douse the flames. The northbound lanes were then reopened, but all southbound lanes remained closed while the accident was under investigation and debris was cleared. Two lanes reopened at 4:40 p.m., in time for rush hour, and the freeway was back to normal by late evening.

Gilchrist and Duarte said they arrived on the scene before police and firefighters.

“It was a tangled mess of metal and tomatoes,” Gilchrist said. “It was ugly.”

Duarte and Gilchrist parked their car about a quarter of a mile north of the accident, grabbed two helmets and a firefighter’s protective coat--the only gear they had with them--from the car’s trunk, and ran toward the wreckage.

The firefighters, assigned to Station 39 in Northridge, had been on their way to a station in downtown Los Angeles to practice driving a ladder truck. They said they believe the fire from the crushed motor home spread quickly because of diesel fuel spilled from the tractor’s tanks. Flames shot about 30 feet into the air from the wreckage, Duarte said.

The fire was burning furiously at the back of the truck and was moving toward the cab, Duarte said. Another motorist who had stopped alerted the firefighters to the truck’s cab, leaning against a retaining wall at a 45-degree angle with the driver trapped inside.

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Duarte said he picked up a coil spring that had broken off the truck and used it to smash the passenger window. Gilchrist reached in and pulled the driver, dazed and disoriented, to safety.

As Gilchrist was leading the driver away from the truck, he and Duarte heard screams from the rear of the rig. It was then that they noticed that a motor home had been crushed under the wreckage and saw the Sweezie boy trying to crawl out as flames engulfed the vehicle.

Gilchrist said he ran to the boy and pulled him to safety. The boy yelled that his family was still inside the camper, but when the firefighters returned and broke the rear window, flames shot out with such intensity that they were unable to enter.

“To sit and watch somebody burn to death, it’s a helpless feeling,” Duarte said. “Not having the resources with me--all I had was a coat and a helmet--I couldn’t put the fire out. It was just too big.”

“Things were popping all around--tires, gas tanks. It was an eerie feeling,” Gilchrist added.

Gaben told authorities his family was on the way to Disneyland.

“I’ll go home to my family and thank God we’re all safe,” Gilchrist said.

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