Recently obtained audio recordings from the Los Angeles Fire Department show that Anne Heche was trapped in the burning wreckage of her automobile for about 45 minutes after she slammed it into a home in Los Angeles on August 5.
The recordings, which NBC4's I-Team was able to get and the date and time stamp, revealed that it took firefighters 20 minutes to find Heche in her car and an additional 20 minutes to remove it from the blazing Mar Vista home so that she could receive medical attention.
"Given the heavy fire and smoke conditions, it wasn't that you could clearly see into the vehicle or clearly be able to access it," LAFD Deputy Chief Richard Fields told NBC4, He added that Heche wasn't pulled over while driving adding, that "I will say that where the person was in the vehicle was not in the driver's seat, but on the floorboard of the passenger seat."
One firefighter found "a person stuck inside the vehicle" when LAFD initially arrived at the residence at 11:01 a.m. local time, according to the site. Fields later explained to NBC4 that "the patient that was identified initially was the person that was in the home" and not Heche.
There was only the homeowner inside the structure, according to a firefighter battling the blaze at 11:18 a.m. They added, "We do have no patients at this time."
At 11:22 a.m., an incident commander radioed in to check on the driver, asking, "Let me clear this up: So you do have a patient in the car?"
At 11:25 a.m., barely three minutes later, the actress was found. "We have identified one patient," a first responder said. "Inaccessible at this time… pushed up against the floorboard."
Around 11:49 a.m., Heche was extricated from the rubble using powerful towing machinery before being transported to the hospital in an ambulance. A firefighter reported, "We have one patient in the auto, being assessed, about to be loaded up on the gurney for transport."
Following the incident, drugs were discovered in the Six Days Seven Nights actress's system. From August 5 until her death on August 12, she was unconscious. Heche passed away from heat burns and smoke inhalation, according to a coroner's findings.
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