ANTIGO — An 80-year-old man was flown to Aspirus Wausau Hospital late Monday morning after a tire blowout caused him to lose control of his dump truck and slam into a tree.
Traveling east on Highway 47 Monday around 11:30 a.m., Glenn Busche had just passed Christie Rd. when one of his truck’s front tires popped, causing the vehicle to veer slightly into a ditch and go airborne over a driveway before a pine tree violently halted its progress. It cracked in half from the impact and toppled into a power line.
As of 10 a.m. Tuesday, Busche’s condition remained serious, according to Aspirus Manager of System Communications and Community Engagement Tom Weaver.
Busche was roughly a mile from home when he lost control of the dump truck, which he had picked up that morning in Merrill. He and his wife Beverly — who was following directly behind him in a car when the accident occurred — had recently bought the truck for their business, Bee Line Tire Recycling. They were returning from purchasing the vehicle at auction.
Les and Mary Rasmussen, who live directly across the road from where the accident occurred, were following behind Beverly when the harrowing sequence of events began.
“Just before we were ready to turn in our driveway, there was just a massive explosion — it sounded like an atomic bomb went off. Then the truck just went flying into the ditch and then up in the air and into the tree,” said Mary Rasmussen, who called 911. “The big tree laying towards the road was on fire from the electrical lines down, and my husband ran over and got him out of the truck, because it started smoking right away and he didn’t know if it was going to blow up or what. Then the transformer blew, and there was another pow, and then the fire just stopped.”
Les Rasmussen said Busche seemed dazed when he reached him.
“He was going in and out. When I first opened up the door, he didn’t say anything. He had blood coming from his head and stuff,” Les said, before going on to explain why he rushed to Busche’s aid. “I knew enough about the power lines and saw that no lines were touching the vehicle or anything. I was in the fire department and then the service, so I knew basically what to do — you just learn that stuff.”
Langlade County Rural Fire Control Chief Mark Sambs said the efforts of the Rasmussens and first responders prevented the after effects of the crash — including a small fire that had begun inside the cab of the truck — from worsening.
“He pulled that guy out of there before it got too involved, and even at that point with the driver out, there was still some fire going, so the cops hit it with a fire extinguisher, which really pretty much contained it and held it at bay. Otherwise, it would have been a bigger black cloud of smoke for sure,” Sambs said.
The initial commotion drew several nearby residents to the scene, including Mark Gass, the owner of the towing company that eventually pulled the truck back onto the road.
“We started wondering what smoke was coming from here and what was going on,” Gass said. “Then the county called and said it was a dump truck that hit a tree and blew out the power. We heard two big bangs and saw smoke coming out. We were in the shop but we had the door open, and we could see what was going on.”
Ellen Lewis was sitting on her deck roughly a half mile away on Christie Road when she heard the tire explode and, thinking something might have happened at a house belonging to one of her neighbors, rushed over.
“His whole face was all full of blood. He’s got a lot of bruising by his stomach, so he’s probably got internal injuries — he’s in rough shape. He asked, ‘What are they doing to me?’ so I’m sure he was in shock. He probably has no clue what happened,” said Lewis, who spent much of her time at the site talking to Beverly as the tow crew worked the mangled vehicle onto the road. “Thankfully, there weren’t any incoming cars, because they’d have been dead. When that front tire blows like that, especially on a vehicle like that…and his wife said they weren’t traveling fast at all. They were almost home — they live right down the road here.”
Sambs also commented on the role of luck in surviving front tire blowouts like Monday morning’s.
“More times than not, they’re safe and they’re built well, but if you run something over in the road or whatever and it puts a cut in it, at a certain point, eventually it just gets weak and that can happen,” Sambs said. “I actually had it happen to a truck I own last year. Fortunately, that didn’t end up like this. But it does happen, and there’s not much control that the driver has at that point.”
Gass said he does not believe the blowout occurred because it hit something in the road.
“The sidewall is blown out and the tread was coming off,” Gass said. “I don’t think he hit something in the road. It’s common enough that steer tires do blow out. It doesn’t happen everyday, but when it does, something bad is usually going to happen.”
Monday night, recounting the chaos she and her husband suddenly were thrown into following the tire’s explosion, Mary Rasmussen still sounded slightly shaken.
“You didn’t know what to think,” she said. “It was just like you were in a state of shock for a moment that this actually happened. It happened within a second. It seemed like it was there — and done.”
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