Firetruck Hit Pickup Head On While Responding to Alarm
This engine is one of two Pierce 1988 engines owned by La Plata Volunteer Fire Department which was wrecked on Nov. 16, 2004.

LA PLATA --- Charles County Sheriff's Department reports that on Nov. 16 at 9:29 p.m., a 1988 Pierce Fire Engine from the La Plata Volunteer Fire Department was traveling southbound on Washington Ave. in La Plata while responding to a fire alarm with its emergency equipment activated. As the fire engine attempted to turn left onto East Hawthorne Drive, the driver, David Lawrence Sanders, 34, of La Plata, observed a 2000 Chevrolet S-10 pick-up truck traveling at a high speed northbound on Washington Ave. Sanders attempted to return to the southbound lane to avoid a collision, but the Chevrolet swerved into the southbound lane and the vehicle collided. The driver of the Chevrolet, John Charles Graff, 32, of La Plata, was flown to Prince George’s General Hospital by Maryland State Police helicopter with non-life threatening injuries. Saunders and the passengers in the fire engine– three La Plata men ages 18,19 and 30, a 23-year old Bryantown woman and an 18-year-old Bryantown man– were not injured. Cpl. S. Walsh of the Traffic Operations Unit is investigating.