A seriously injured driver had to be extricated and flown to the hospital after a car and a semi-truck crashed on Route 47 near Hebron Monday evening.
The Hebron-Alden-Greenwood Fire Protection District responded around 9:55 p.m. Monday to the intersection of Route 47 and O’Brien Road in unincorporated Hebron for a vehicle crash with injuries.
Hebron-Alden-Greenwood Fire Protection District Chief Thomas Linneman said a semi-truck and a car were involved.
The incident was upgraded to bring additional fire departments, including Woodstock, Richmond and Wonder Lake, to the scene after it was reported that a person was trapped in one of the cars.
Fire crews found two adult patients, Linneman said. One of them, the driver of the semi-truck, declined transport to the hospital.
The other patient, the driver of the car, was trapped in their heavily damaged vehicle.
Linneman said the driver had suffered serious injuries and a LifeNet medical helicopter was requested to the scene.
It took firefighters eight minutes to free the driver, who was then transferred to the LifeNet medical helicopter.
The helicopter landed in a designated landing zone just north of the intersection in a field, Linneman said.
The helicopter flew the victim to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, which is a Level 1 trauma center. They were stable at the time of transport.
Both drivers were the sole occupants of their vehicles.
Linneman said he was unsure how the crash occurred but it took place in the intersection.
The car involved came to rest approximately 25 feet off of the roadway in the field.
The McHenry County Sheriff’s Office had shut down the intersection for three and a half hours while it was conducting an investigation. The intersection was reopened around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday.