AURORA — Jason Rhodes doesn’t remember the flames searing his flesh or the desperate battle that first responders waged to rescue him from his fiery vehicle.
So on Monday, Rhodes listened and asked questions as those rescuers pieced together how they and passers-by worked to save him.
“I have seen pictures of my car. What everybody did to get me out is amazing,” Rhodes, 34, said at University of Colorado Hospital, where he was treated. The hospital arranged a reunion between Rhodes and Colorado State Patrol officers, Aurora firefighters and Rural Metro paramedics who participated in the rescue.
“You guys totally saved my life,” he said.
Rhodes, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital, was driving to a meeting when he was rear-ended by a tractor-trailer on Interstate 70 in Aurora the morning of Aug. 8.
When Trooper Randy Orton and Cpl. Tim McClinchy reached the wreck, they found Rhodes trapped in his 2007 gray Chevrolet Trailblazer. The dashboard digging into Rhodes’ legs made it impossible to pull him out.
His arm was burning, and he was encircled by flames shooting 6 feet above the roofline.
The troopers realized their single fire extinguisher wouldn’t be enough. They got extinguishers from semi-truck drivers who stopped and, at one point, asked witnesses to run along the line of trucks to collect more.
While one trooper sprayed the fire to keep it away from the screaming Rhodes, the other held his body as far from the flames as possible.
It took the Aurora Fire Department about five minutes to reach the wreck.
“We could see the flames and smoke from three-quarters of a mile away. To know there was a person in that fireball was pretty intense,” said George Sjaardema, who drove an engine and pumped water on the fire.
By the time the first firetruck arrived, the troopers had emptied as many as 20 extinguishers and dumped a gallon jug of water that someone had thrown to them from another vehicle.
“There is a trapped party and the screaming,” Sjaardema recalled. “It just seemed to take forever. You want to get the guy out, you know he is on fire but you can’t get him out fast enough.”
Once the fire was out, firefighters had to cut off the roof of the car and push the dash away from his legs, said Aurora Fire Captain Nancy Reublin.
Rhodes was airlifted to University Hospital and treated in the burn center.
“Part of the arm was burned down to the bone,” said Gordon Lindberg, one of the surgeons who treated Rhodes. He also had burns on his ankle and back.
Rhodes’ wife, Jennifer, 27, learned of the accident about eight hours later, she said. “I started shaking and crying. . . . I went to his room and didn’t leave for five days,” she said.
After three surgeries, Rhodes is out of the hospital and back at work, although he is only able to do paperwork, he said. He expects to make a full recovery and to be able to perform surgery again.
He added: “I owe all these guys the world.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
