Music Row is known for churning out chart-topping hits. But last week, a few music row mainstays found themselves involved in a much riskier endeavor.
A group of Music Row executives from Nashville helped rescue 10 people from a fiery crash on I-24 in Southern Illinois. The whole thing started when a semi-truck plowed into cars waiting on construction.
The big wreck caused an eight-car chain reaction. "I can't get the sound out of my head," Frank Wing told The Tennessean. "An 18-wheeler that just plowed into these people. I saw all this debris going everywhere." Wing is the Vice President of APA, a major music booking agency.
But soon, Wing and his 10-person crew leaped into action. They sat a few cars up from the wreckage, all on motorcycles and all on the way to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota.
"People are screaming everywhere," Marc Oswald told the paper. "It looked like a war zone." Oswald heads up Fontanel entertainment and the Oswald Entertainment Group. His broth Greg also experienced the crash.
"It's like, BOOM! Like a bomb. As loud a boom as you can imagine," Greg Oswald, co-head of the Nashville office of William Morris Endeavor talent agency, said. "You can see a car going straight up into the air."
But luckily for those involved in the wreck, the Oswalds had 10 years of prior important experience. They both served as paramedics in San Diego.
So, they immediately called 911 and then got bystanders together. As gas leaked all over the road, the group methodically removed victims from their cars. Those included a family of six with young children aged 6 to 11. After that, a truck full of men.
The biggest challenge came in helping a woman desperately trapped in her car. Knowing they couldn't get her out themselves, the crew moved the car away from the highway three feet at a time. And all this while fire ripped through the now-empty vehicles. Oh, and one car had live ammo randomly popping off.
In other words, everybody got extremely lucky.
