Lynbrook EMTs visit injured man

Courtesy Estelle Riviera/LFD Lynbrook Fire Department EMT Lynn Curtis visited Hugo Gallardo in his hospital bed at NCUMC last Thursday.

Courtesy Estelle Riviera/LFD

“I know who you are. I will always remember you. You saved my life!”

Those were the words of Hugo Gallardo on August 16, speaking in Spanish as he greeted Lieutenant Lynn Curtis from his hospital bed at Nassau County University Medical Center. She and Captain Estelle Rivera, both members of the Lynbrook Fire Department’s Emergency Medical Company, visited with the man that Curtis and other firefighters saved in a terrible accident on July 23 when Gallardo was run over in his wheelchair by a tractor-trailer as he crossed Sunrise Highway at Ocean Avenue. Gallardo lost his left leg in the accident.

On that day, Gallardo, age 58, had just had lunch with his brother-in-law, Jim Geurra, at US Lumber at Ocean Avenue and Merrick Road, where Guerra works. According to Geurra, his brother travels weekly on his small, motorized wheelchair from his home in Oceanside to have lunch with him. Gallardo uses the wheelchair while he recovers from recent back surgery. He also wears a fiberglass and metal brace from his chest to his hip while his back heals. “It usually takes him 50 minutes to travel in the wheelchair from Lynbrook, down Merrick Road, to his home,” Guerra said.

After lunch that day, Gallardo decided to head back home. At about 2 p.m., as he began to cross Sunrise Highway when the light changed, he was hit by the tractor trailer who turned from Ocean Avenue onto Sunrise Highway, going west. Gallardo told firefighters and Geurra that as the truck turned he looked up at the truck and saw the driver was on his cell phone. The truck ran him and his wheelchair over before stopping. Gallardo was under the truck.

The Lynbrook police and fire departments were immediately dispatched to the scene for a reported “pedestrian struck.” An Emergency Medical Company ambulance driven by Ex-Chief William Consenza with EMT-CC Curtis and EMT Corey Hirsch on board responded within three minutes of the call after Lynbrook Fire Chief Anthony DeCarlo ordered a “forthwith response” from the scene.