Commercial Truck Leaves Family Suspended on Bridge: The Amazing Rescue

Berrier Insurance, commercial truck insurance specialists, would like to thank the amazing Fire Fighters Police Officers and especially the Navy Seabees for their bravery and quick action. We would like to share their story of bravery with you.


A mother and her two daughters were rescued from their car left teetering on a California freeway bridge after a gravel truck had hit them in the northbound lanes of U.S. Route 101. The rescue was a joint effort of the fire department and a team of Navy Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion.

The truck rear-ended the car then plunged into a creek bursting into flames, killing the California trucker, while the BMW struck the bridge’s railing and sat suspended on the edge of a 100-foot drop into the creek with Kelli Groves and two daughters, ages 10 and 10 months, trapped inside.

The Navy Seabees happened to be passing by the scene in transport of a forklift from Fort Hunter Liggett where NMCB 3 had finished a pre-deployment certification exercise in mid-December. Equipment Operator 1st Class (SCW) Frankie Cruz, Construction Mechanic 2nd Class (SCW) Michael McCracken, and Equipment Operator Construction man Clinton Roberts of NMCB 3 along with Construction Mechanic 2nd Class (SCW) Shawn Legg, Construction Mechanic 2nd Class (SCW) Benjamin Mead, and Construction Mechanic 3rd Class (SCW) James Winters from the 31SRG.

"As the fire department was cutting the car to get the family out, it kept on slipping over the bridge and faced a 100 foot fall," said McCracken, the forklift operator. "I talked to the fire captain in charge and he was excited to hear that we had an extendable-boom forklift just 200 to 300 feet behind the wreck and he said to go get it." The Seabees off-loaded the forklift to stabilize the car so rescue crews could use the Jaws of Life to extract the mother and her two young children.

An hour later family was pulled out of their demolished car and hospitalized. "The mom and two children are all alive, and we had a hand in it," said McCracken. "That is the biggest thing that I got out of it." "We were just in the right place at the right time,"

Once again thank you to every one who had a part to play in this rescue from Berrier Insurance. To read more on this story visit: SFGate Article