But for a few feet and a couple of seconds, Barry Minnich’s life could have come to a sudden end on Oct. 28.
“It could have easily have been a much different story for me,” said Minnich, a Luling volunteer firefighter.
The aforementioned date represents the night Hurricane Zeta surged through the area. Minnich was responding to a call that night from a family whose power had gone out and had no fuel for a generator – an infant in the home was on a ventilator, and Minnich was bringing fuel to get the generator back up and running.
But his trip was cut short in an instant.
“It sounded like a large explosion,” Minnich said. “It came out of nowhere.”
A tree collapsed as result of the storm – right on top of Minnich’s unit vehicle. He said the impact stopped the vehicle on a dime, and at first he thought he may have hit something.
“When the smoke cleared from the airbag, there was nothing out there,” Minnich said. “Everything was good, but then it wasn’t so good. I thought my left arm was broken. I was never unconscious, but there are a few minutes in there that I don’t really remember. I leaned my head back, I thought on the back of my seat, but it was actually the roof of the car on the back of my head.
“I saw a huge limb in the back of the vehicle. I didn’t go back to look at it until a couple of days later and saw just how large that section of tree was and the damage it did. I was lucky to be sitting in the best place possible in the vehicle. They told me if it had been a little bit closer to the front of the car … it wouldn’t have been good for me.”
He had his wits about him enough to radio for help, as his cell phone was damaged in the accident. He found the radio in the accident clutter after it was knocked off the dashboard and contacted 911 dispatch for help.
Minnich also wanted to get word to his wife, Ann, that he had been in the accident. Little did he know, she already knew, and was in fact the first to know.
“I’d left the radio on in the house, and she heard me call dispatch,” Minnich said. “She heard it all go down. She was a trooper through it all … more calm than anyone.”
Once responders arrived, they were able to remove him from the vehicle, which was damaged to the point that he had to be cut out from it. Because it seemed his arm could be broken – it wasn’t, as it turned out, but needed evaluation – he was set up for ambulance transport to the hospital.
That trip brought some unwelcome Deja Vu. As the ambulance headed down Paul Maillard Road, another tree fell onto the road out in front of the travelers, and the vehicle crashed into it.
“What are the chances of that?” Minnich mused. “Within 45 minutes, two emergency response vehicles wiped out by trees. That one covered the entire road.”
Thankfully, nobody was injured in the second crash, though like Minnich, the driver was fortunate to be just out of major harm’s way.
The first crash, Minnich said, was too close for comfort. He couldn’t hear our of his left ear, which he attributes to a combination of getting hit on the side of the head by the side airbag and also the loud noise of impact. He battled soreness and some major bruising, and his arm was swollen.
But, he was alive.
“Once I started thinking about it, several days later, it made me wonder,” Minnich said. “That old saying, ‘here one day, gone the next,’ that easily could have been me. I think I must have had a guardian angel with me. I also started thinking about what’s left undone in my life. What do I still have to do here?
“It just really makes you think about those things you take for granted. I’d never had experienced a close incident like that, one that could have gone the other way for me.”
He has been involved with fire department and emergency response teams for 46 years. Minnich began that journey through the insistence of a college friend as the two attended Southeastern.
“He and my fire chief were the guys who really influenced me the most,” Minnich said. “Them and the guys who were the Sunday crew, they kept me interested. I never thought once about getting out.”
When he and Ann got married in 1976, he gave her a warning: “I’m not getting out of this. You’ve experienced it almost two years.”
“She said, ‘Go for it,’” Minnich said. “She was good with it, and I never got out of it.”
While that October night was the closest he had come to a major injury in the line of duty, risk was always an assumed part of the deal, he said, for himself and his fellow first responders.
“We don’t dwell on things like that,” Minnich said.
Nor will he after this experience. Minnich has no plans to hang up his gear after his close call. Being a firefighter is at the core of who he is, and he says he couldn’t imagine himself not doing it after so many years on the job.
“I know it sounds like a cliché, that I want to serve my community. That’s a core value giving back, but it’s also an adrenaline factor,” Minnich said. “Maybe not so much now that I’m older, but back then, to do something and get that rush and excitement of putting out that fire … you go to something major, and help be a big part of making a bad thing a little bit better. That’s always kept me going.
“I’ve volunteered and worked on an ambulance. I’ve been with the fire department, kept training and training and training … it became a part of me.”
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