Western Salisbury Fire Chief Narrowly Escapes Falling Tree

Western Salisbury Fire Chief Steve Schneider and his wife Sheryl were headed home from the fire house in Green Acres around 10 p.m. Saturday during the height of snowstorm when he stopped his pickup truck on W. Rock Road to report a large tree limb was blocking the road.

No sooner had he made the call to the guys back at the station then he stepped out of his Ford pickup truck to walk a bit farther up the road to see if there were other downed trees. He never got far.

"I heard three little pops. I looked up and all I saw was snow," Schneider said Monday outside the fire station.

A massive tree limb came crashing down on the truck amid what seemed like an avalanche of snow. It pushed him to the ground, but each time he tried to stand to grab the door handle he slipped.

"Who left a toboggan in the middle of the street? And why is there a Western Salisbury Fire Department insignia on it?," he wondered. But it wasn't a sled. It was one of his truck doors emblazoned with two department decals, one honoring the late Jack Kelly, one of the department's firefighters, that had blown off that was causing him to slip.

"Are you OK? Are you OK?," Schneider shouted to his wife, who was seated in the front passenger seat.

I'm fine, she said, although the dashboard was now in her lap and she was surrounded by shattered glass. Shaken, but fine. It wasn't until later the couple noticed tiny glass cuts on their hands and Sheryl's leg was bruised.

The large branch had smashed the roof, completely collapsing the driver's side.

Schneider immediately called the township's emergency operations center and within seconds Salisbury Township police drove up, followed by Eastern and Western Salisbury Fire Department firefighters. 

Schneider said if he had remained in the truck, "I would have been killed." And, if he had reported the first fallen tree minutes earlier to the station, he said, shaking his head in disbelief, "there would have been three or four guys standing there."