A normal day changed quickly

CROFTON, Neb. — It was a beautiful spring day last March as Fred Steffen rolled down Nebraska Highway 12 toward Niobrara and Santee to deliver a load of propane.

It was just a normal day for Steffen. That quickly changed.

“It was a gorgeous morning,” said Steffen. “I was cruising down the road, my window was down, and as I popped over the hill, I saw a pickup headed left of center.”

He searched the south side of the road for a spot to drive into the ditch without rolling the truck. Steffen had a plan. He would ride it through the ditch, make a big U-turn before the creek and be on his way.

He remembers talking to God, “I said if this is the way it ends, so be it, but I have a lot of things to do yet.”

Steffen thought he missed the pickup as it passed the front of his truck. He didn’t realize the pickup still was headed for a collision behind Steffen’s cab.

The back wheels of the propane truck drove over the pickup and sent the rear end of the propane truck rolling. Then it was spinning in circles. Steffen knew it wasn’t good.

When the truck stopped finally, Steffen was still strapped in his seat belt, hanging upside down from the roof of the cab. The door post had smashed his shoulder and the steering wheel was against his chest.

Then Steffen heard the ominous hissing noise propane handlers are trained to hear. There was a gas leak.

“I started talking to God again,” Steffen said. “‘OK,’ I said, ‘you got me this far, you got to get me out.’”

Looking to his left, there was a little window of light — his only opportunity to crawl out.

Steffen tried to stand when he pulled free of the wreck but fell down. His leg broken, he started to crawl when he saw a man in front of him.

A Crofton man, Marlin Schieffer, had stopped to help.

Schieffer asked Steffen if he could walk because Schieffer thought he was too big for him to carry. Steffen said no, but he could crawl, and they had better get moving because a fire already had broken out and an explosion was close at hand.

But the explosion never happened.

The fire marshal suspects the fill pipe at the back of the tank cracked when the truck was rolling and the back side was damaged. But every other safety valve and checkpoint on the truck worked.

Steffen knows someone was watching out for him.

Steffen credits the fire and rescue teams that arrived within minutes of the accident. They evacuated the area and fought the fire, keeping the tank cool so it didn’t explode.

Steffen is back to work. He had a broken leg, a torn rotator cuff in his shoulder from the crashing of the door post down on his shoulder and nerve damage in his elbow.

The leg has healed, and surgery over the last few months has corrected the two other injuries.

For three months after the accident, Steffen rode with his business partner, John Broders, on propane deliveries.

One day there was no one to take the route to the west, and Steffen decided to do it. As he approached the accident site, he started sweating and eventually pulled off the road.

It’s better now, but Steffen said he regrets there is a family without a dad — the other driver, who died in the crash. Steffen has visited with the family.

“Every morning I ask God to watch over my wife and my kids, and I tell them I love them,” Steffen said. “I tell the kids to use their seat belts. That is what saved my life.”

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