Women Drivers: 'Firefighter Rescues Driver From Truck Dangling Off Bridge'

(Thank God for brave men.)

The New York Times comically avoids informing readers that the driver was a woman, describing her 6 times as only “the driver,” before we finally get to a “her.”

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.

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HERO FIREMAN: Louisville, Ky., fireMAN, Bryce Carden

“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” … 

“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.’”…

“I had no idea just how many people were watching,” he said. “I was focused at the task at hand.”

Mr. Carden said he had practiced the rope rescue technique so many times that it had become “second nature,” but Friday was the first time he had used it in an emergency. …

Chief O’Neill described Mr. Carden as one of the “nicest, happiest guys” and just the person to have led the high-stakes rescue.

For Mr. Carden, after the rescue, it was a long night of taking calls, getting back to normal firehouse life …

“We went straight back to work,” he said. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to my wife until three hours later.”’