The Daily BuzzTwo big rigs crush Oregon man's pickup truck, and he walks away unscathed
Kaleb Whitby, 27, is a very lucky man.
Early Saturday morning, Whitby’s Chevy Silverado was one of 26 vehicles involved in a pileup on Interstate 84, about 33 miles east of Baker City, Oregon.
His pickup flipped when it struck a jackknifed semi truck. Then another tractor-trailer slid towards him.
"I got scared of the possibility it could have been the end," the young father recalled.
Sure enough, the second truck slid sideways into the first tractor-trailer, crushing Whitby’s pickup between the two semi-trucks.
"It was just metal crunching and glass. It was just all fast and loud,” Whitby told CNN.
Sergio Karplyuk, the 32-year-old driver of the second truck that struck Whitby’s vehicle — he didn’t even see the crushed car at first — spotted Whitby amidst the debris and helped free him from the wreckage.
"I see this head and he’s just like, starts speaking," Karplyuk told The Washington Post. “It’s just this guy and he says, ‘I’m okay, I just can’t get out.’ He was just so calm that I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Are you sure you’re totally okay? Your legs aren’t crushed and your knees are all right? He kept saying he was fine.’”
With Whitby’s permission, Karplyuk took a photo of him wedged inside the truck, the cab almost completely flattened between the two semis.
Remarkably, Whitby was able to wriggle out of the bottom of the wreckage and walk away from the accident.
He immediately started helping others who were involved in the pileup.
"I’ve got two Band-Aids on my right ring finger," Whitby, a farmer, described his injuries to OregonLive. “And a little bit of ice on my left eye.”
About a dozen people were injured in the crash, two seriously.
Oregon State Police Sergeant Kyle Hove said that he was surprised no one died in the pileup.
"This is the biggest crash I have seen in a while," he said. “It was extremely slick out there. One semi that spun around on the black ice started the chain reaction.”
Whitby told reporters that the scary crash was his first accident.
"Thank God that I’m still alive," he told OregonLive. “Now I’ve got to go figure out why.”
Whitby’s parents picked him up at a local hospital and drove him home to his pregnant wife and 2-year-old son.
