Army Ranger Master Sgt. Joe Thach was driving to work Friday morning when traffic began to slow and billowing smoke erupted just ahead of him. It was, he realized, a car beginning to burn, with the driver stuck inside. The senior Ranger NCO leaped into the fiery wreck and pulled out an entrapped driver, almost certainly saving the man’s life.
Thach is no stranger to such moments.
For one, he’s an 18-year Army vet, with more than half that time at the 75th Ranger Regiment. His combat awards include a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with V device.
But the wreck was also the third deadly car wreck he’d stumbled across since 2023. Earlier this year, he helped save a family whose car had run off a road into lake waters. A year before, he was the first person on the scene of a crash just down the road from his own house.
“I know that I’ve been involved in a few of these things, it just must be in my nature,” Thach told Task & Purpose. “I think it was just feeling privileged enough to to be able to show up and help, where it was needed, and having the opportunity to do that. Overall, it’s a privilege and I’m grateful that it happened so I could help my neighbor out. That’s really what I’d want somebody to help me out with, too.”
An uneventful commute
Thach was on his way to work at a law enforcement training center where he works as an instructor outside of his Army position. Though Interstate 5 in Tacoma, Washington is usually busy, traffic had slowed to a crawl.
“I kind of rolled my eyes, like, another day in the [pacific north west], just traffic for no reason,” Thach said. “Then I noticed through all the brake lights that thick, dark cloud of smoke starting to build a little bit. I was like, ‘Huhh, okay, that’s a little bit weird.’”
He switched to the HOV lane and sped ahead for a better look. The smoke was from a single car, with a fire engulfing the engine compartment.
Though a state trooper was on scene, Thach realized a man was still in the car with no one trying to free him.
“Nothing was happening. So that was the deliberate decision point. Like, nobody’s helping, so I’m likely needed. So that’s probably me,” Thach said. “So I stopped, grabbed the aid bag, ran out and saw a single occupied vehicle and made a quick visual assessment, and removed him from the fire that was starting to build.”
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The fire was rapidly spreading into the passenger compartment of the car and Thach knew time was limited.
“As I walked up, you could smell the burning plastic and aluminum and the heat of the fire was building,” Thach said. “After looking at that, I thought, ‘Yeah, time to get this bro out of here.’”
The damage to the vehicle had pinned the driver side door, but Thach pried it open and freed the man inside. As he pulled the man away from the burning car, the driver picked up on Thach’s military presence and told him that he too was a veteran, and had fought in Fallujah.
“He said he was 44, and, he was in a pretty bad way,” Thach said. “I kind of felt for him because he probably had a lot of bad days before, if he in fact had been in Falujah. But this morning is like one of the worst days of his life, colliding into a wall, trapped inside a burning vehicle.”
The two had a moment of bonding over serving in the military as Thach medically assessed him from head to toe for injuries. The driver was semi-conscious and Thach covered him with a burn blanket. In total, Thatch figured he was on scene for about 10 minutes. By the time firefighters arrived, he said, the car was completely engulfed in flames.
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