PORTSMOUTH — A 61-year-old man driving an SUV that was involved in a serious head-on collision on the Escape Bridge Monday morning was later transported to a hospital by a Boston MedFlight helicopter.

After extricating the man from the Ford Escape, first responders rushed him to the Common Fence Point playground, where the helicopter was standing by.

The accident occurred just after 9:30 a.m. on the bridge, which links the Island Park and Hummocks sections of town.

Dispatchers helping to organize the response said the driver of the Ford Escape suffered a bilateral fracture of the fibula and tibia bones in one of his lower legs, and rescuers had applied a tourniquet.

The other vehicle was a dump truck owned by Brennan & Sons, a local excavation and construction company. The driver of the truck was taken to a hospital but escaped serious injury, witnesses said.

Both vehicles were facing south following the accident, with the car pushed up against the sidewalk on the east side of the bridge.

Members of the Portsmouth Fire Department, along with Middletown, Bristol and Tiverton fire departments, assisted in extricating the man from the Ford Escape.

He was taken by ambulance to Common Fence Point, where the helicopter was waiting in an open field. The MedFlight copter took off with the patient aboard just after 11 a.m.

MedFlight is usually called when patients have life-threatening illnesses or injuries and need immediate critical care and rapid transport.

The bridge was shut down for over two hours while investigators from the Portsmouth Police Detective Division, Portsmouth Accident Recon Team and the Rhode Island State Police Truck Squad assisted with the investigation. 

The investigation is ongoing, police said. 

Witness describes scene

Another driver who said she was the first on the scene after the accident described what she saw.

“I was heading (north) toward Route 24 and everything came to a stop. I said to myself, ‘I can’t possibly be stumbling upon a car accident,’” said the woman, who declined to give her name.

“I got out of my car and heard the truck driver say the car crossed in front of his path, that he tried to avoid it but there was nothing he could do,” she said.

The driver of truck told her his shoulder had popped out, but that he put it back in himself, she said.

“He was really shaken up,” she said. 

Then she looked over at the car — its front end crumpled in and a man trapped inside — and rushed over, she said.

“I told him, ‘You have to hold on,’” she said. “I was rubbing his back and holding him and telling him everything’s going to be OK, but he was hurt so badly. He was in an out of consciousness. I don’t know if he even knew I was there.”

The woman called 911 and paramedics rushed to the scene, but the wait seemed like an eternity to her, she said.

“It was so lonely on the bridge, waiting for people. I’m still shaking; I can’t get those images out of my head,” said the woman, adding she hopes the man will recover from his injuries.

“He’s somebody’s father, somebody’s brother,” she said.

We will report more as new details come in.