A 62-year-old Patoka man was pulled from his overturned car Wednesday evening after it ran off Hawthorn Road east of the bridge near Freeman Road and flipped upside down into a dry creek bed. Kenneth Adams was partially ejected through the car window during the crash, and it took Salem Fire Protection District crews about 40 minutes to get him out before he was flown to a St. Louis hospital.
According to southernillinoisnow.com, the crash happened around 6 p.m. Wednesday, with Salem Police reporting that Adams's car left the roadway and overturned upside down in the dry creek. Assistant Fire Chief Bill Fulton said rescuers' initial efforts focused on getting Adams back into the vehicle so they could safely use the Jaws of Life, rather than attempting to pull him free while he remained partially trapped through the window.
A Delicate, Multi-Step Extrication
Once Adams was repositioned, Salem Fire Protection District crews planned to use the Jaws of Life to lift the car and cut him free, the outlet reported. That kind of careful stabilization work before heavy tools come into play reflects training the district has invested in for years — its personnel complete 40-hour vehicle machinery operations courses certified through the Illinois Fire Service Institute specifically to handle complex auto extrications and disentanglements, according to WJBD Radio.
Fulton, who has served with the district since 1996, works as a field instructor specializing in agricultural and rural rescue for the University of Illinois Fire Service Institute and was promoted to Assistant Fire Chief in 2022 while continuing his role as District Fire Marshal, per the same station's reporting. That rescue background lines up with the scale of what the district covers: the Salem Fire Protection District serves roughly 124 to 125 square miles of Marion County, including nearly 12,000 residents, 13.5 miles of Interstate 57, and 16 square miles of oilfields, according to the Salem Fire Protection District. The district was created by voter referendum in 1955 to expand coverage beyond Salem's city limits.
Getting Adams to Trauma Care
After being freed from the wreck, Adams was placed in an ambulance and transported to the Salem Township Hospital helipad before being flown to a St. Louis hospital for treatment. That helipad, designated 5IL9 and located one mile north of Salem, is a 50-by-50-foot concrete facility built to provide direct emergency transfer capabilities, according to SkyVector. Salem sits roughly 60 miles east of St. Louis, and ground transit to St. Louis medical centers typically takes about 90 minutes, according to the City of Salem, making helicopter transport standard for critically injured rural patients who need Level I or Level II trauma care.
Equipment Behind the Rescue
The extrication tools used in Wednesday's rescue trace back to state investment in rural crash response. In March 2023, the Office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal awarded a Small Equipment Grant to the Salem Fire Protection District specifically to purchase specialized rescue tools for vehicle extrications along heavy traffic corridors, according to RiverBender.com. Fire officials at the time pointed to frequent vehicle rollovers and entrapments on U.S. 50 and I-57 as the reason for the urgent need for updated gear.
The crash also fits a broader pattern in Illinois traffic data. Rural roadways accounted for 33.0% of all motor vehicle crashes and 31.9% of fatal crashes statewide in 2023, according to John J. Malm & Associates, with rural crashes in Illinois frequently involving higher speeds and longer transport times to trauma centers. Separately, Illinois Department of Transportation safety data from 2021 found a front-seat belt compliance rate of 93.5% among the state's motorists, though non-use or partial ejection remains a leading cause of severe injury in rollover crashes.
Wednesday's rescue comes months after Hoodline reported on another fatal Marion County rollover involving a Salem resident whose Jeep struck a tree on Skyline Road. Adams's condition following the flight to St. Louis has not been reported.
