Stuck semi-truck

A semi-truck driver from Somalia on route from somewhere in Arkansas to the Ozark Vinyl facility in the former Hodgson Mill plant in Gainesville ended up in Bridges Creek late Wednesday night, March 25, when his GPS routed him onto the rugged, twisting County Road 555 between Bakersfield and Tecumseh. Tecumseh Volunteer Fire Department assistant chief J. B. Duke arrived at the scene as a first responder shortly after the 11 p.m. 911 call and then had to turn around and go back to return as a towtruck driver in the Freightliner rollback he uses in his Duke’s Towing business. His fellow TVFD firefighters, along with Lick Creek VFD captain James Wiley Jr., waded through the creek’s cold, dark, fast-flowing waters to attach a cable to the semi so the Freightliner’s 15,000-pound-pulling-capacity wench could ease it out of the creek gravel and back onto the slab. “He was coming up from Arkansas, through Bakersfield, and onto O Highway,” Duke said. “And then, instead of bringing him on up O Highway to Smokey Road to 160, his GPS routed him on to the county road.” The truck was too long to steer around the sharp curve where the road crosses the creek on a concrete slab, and the truck’s front wheels went into the water and sank into the gravel. Once he had been pulled out of the creek, the driver, who told his rescuers in broken English that he’d been in the U.S. about 13 months, continued carefully up County Road 555 to Highway 160 – getting stuck one more time on a sharp curve, Duke said – before presumably finally arriving at his Gainesville destination.