Firefighter Rescues Driver in Truck Hanging Over Kentucky Bridge

For nearly an hour, the driver of a tractor-trailer was trapped in its cab as it dangled high above the Ohio River off the side of a Kentucky bridge after a multivehicle crash on Friday.

From the bridge, emergency responders shouted directions to the driver. Emergency crews set up a rope system and lowered a Louisville, Ky., firefighter, Bryce Carden, to rescue her.

“Thank God,” the driver said when Mr. Carden drew even with the truck’s cab, he recalled at a news conference on Friday.

Initially, Mr. Carden said, he struggled to free the driver from her seatbelt.

“We were given a free pocketknife during our trainings, and I had that pocketknife on me, so I was able to cut her out of her seatbelt,” he said in a phone interview on Saturday. “I was able to get her out and get the rest of the harness on her.”

The driver and Mr. Carden, who were now attached to each other, were about 100 feet above the river as they were lifted up to the bridge, a process that took about five minutes.

“I kept telling her ‘I have you, I have you,’” Mr. Carden said on Saturday. “She was just thanking God, and then I told her, ‘Let’s just keep praying together.’”