Ohio: Local non-profit starts after fatal turnpike crash last November

A local nonprofit group started with a simple question between a husband and wife after a fatal Ohio Turnpike crash. The question was: “How do you hit a firetruck?”

That was what Alissa Kolar asked her husband, Canfield Fire Capt. Troy Kolar, when he got home from a fatal crash Nov. 5, 2014, on the Ohio Turnpike. Kolar, along with part-time paramedic and firefighter Brian Blevins, were assisting a stalled vehicle on the side of the Ohio Turnpike when Karen Zorn, 27, of Maryland, stopped her sport utility vehicle behind the firetruck.

A car hauler, driven by Allen Worley, 25, of Indiana, struck the fire- truck, which compressed the SUV and caused it to catch fire, killing Zorn, according to Vindicator files.

Kolar and Blevins were honored for their actions that day by Liberty Mutual Insurance with its Firemark Award earlier this summer.

“I never worried about traffic accidents. Like, who thinks about that? Your husband is a firefighter; you worry about him burning. You don’t think about something happening on the road,” Alissa Kolar recalled of her talk with her husband Nov. 5.

“I remember saying, ‘Who doesn’t see a firetruck? How do you hit a firetruck?’ He said, ‘Oh my God, it happens all the time. He said, ‘Sometimes the worst parts of our days are getting to the problem we’re trying to fix.”

From that conversation, a T-shirt design contest took place among students at Mahoning County Career and Technical Center, where Alissa is a teacher. A shirt was designed and the first batch of shirts was sold as a fundraiser.

But it continued from there.

Alissa said First Responders First received its 501(c)(3) status as a nonprofit this spring and has had a few fundraisers since then. The monies raised through restaurant and bar events helped it give about $700 in safety equipment to the Campbell Fire Department, the first department the new group has supported.

One Campbell fire official called the gift “Christmas in July.”

First Responders First has a seven-person board of directors made up of people from ambulance, police, fire and road crews.

That board voted to make its first contribution to Campbell – and also to have the first department support a fire department, because Kolar is a firefighter.

That donation included collapsible cones with strobe lights, a collapsible sign warning motorists of an accident ahead as well as traffic cones to be put over flashlights.

Campbell Fire Chief Nicholas Hrelec said he didn’t know much about First Responders First when the group first called his department.

“I really didn’t know what to expect, like road flares or something” in terms of equipment, he said. He and members of his department, along with Troy Kolar, went through magazines talking about what equipment Campbell needed or wanted.

The next day, Hrelec said Kolar told him they would get about $700 worth of the equipment.

“We were shocked, and we weren’t expecting it at all. It’s stuff we normally wouldn’t buy because our budget is so tight,” he said.

On roadway safety, Hrelec said: “When we’re on the road, they kind of use the firetruck for protection. They try to put that emergency vehicle between them and the roadway ... we don’t really have a lot of people to direct traffic, and that’s when people drive through the scene and make it difficult.”

Troy Kolar said the issue of driver awareness of first responders had been a frustration of his before the November crash.

“It was really frustrating before the accident, but I think once it became personal, then I started looking at more news stories and doing research on how often this happens, and it’s unacceptable.”

The couple recalled the November crash. Zorn, the woman killed in the crash, “was doing what she was supposed to do,” Alissa Kolar said.

“She couldn’t move over so she came to a complete stop behind [the firetruck] and was hit,” Troy Kolar said.

In the future, the group hopes to have an application on its website, www.firstrespondersfirst.org, for requests for funding.

It also hopes for a big fundraiser event next summer using safety techniques, such as a firehose carry, and a long-term goal of a scholarship.

The Kolars hope to have that scholarship, when established, named in the honor of Karen Zorn.