‘I thought I was going to die’: Truckie’s incredible escape from Bruce Hwy ‘Armageddon’

Truckie Glenn Bennett spent 24 days in a coma and more than six months in hospital after escaping a fiery Bruce Highway crash that first responders described as ‘Armageddon’.

When Glen Bennett closes his eyes, he can see it.

He’s trapped inside his burning truck, his body on fire, the devil-red glow of the flames is swallowing his legs, threatening to claim his life.

He can see the scorching hell that erupted after crashing his truck on the Bruce Highway south of Gladstone on what, up until that point, had been an ordinary shift for the truck driver heading north from Brisbane.

He still feels the panic of knowing he had seconds to find a way out of the truck before there was a point of no escape.

When Bennett, 44, is taken back to that night two years ago, when he suffered 70 per cent burns to his body and multiple broken bones, he can hear the voice inside his head telling him this was how it ended.

He remembers the 1am phone call from the back of the ambulance to his wife, Roni, 41, back at their Bellmere home, north of Brisbane, to say goodbye and apologise for leaving her a single mother to their son, Hugo, who was two at the time.

Above all that horror, however, Bennett is still overcome with the fight he faced to survive.

Glen Bennett tells his harrowing story of survival after being in a fiery truck crash. Picture: Mark Cranitch.

“I just remember thinking that I was going to die,” says Bennett, who had his legs amputated below the knee in lifesaving operations.

“The biggest thing that got me out of that truck was thinking, ‘I’m not ready to die, I’ve only just become a dad’, and I still wanted to be a dad.”

“I know it was close, I probably should be dead but I have my wife to be a husband to and my boy to be a dad to and that’s why I am still here.”

For most of the past two years, Bennett has been consumed by the trauma on the painstaking road to recovery to rebuild his life.

He spent 24 days in a coma, more than six months in hospital, endured 24 surgeries (and counting), seven weeks of rehab and 15 months wearing a compression suit for his burns.

Glen Bennett in hospital lucky to be alive after a fiery truck crash in 2020 the nearly claimed his life. Picture: Supplied.

Doctors say his chance of survival was slim.

His story has impacted many, including Janelle White, the paramedic called to save Bennett’s life on the side of the road.

In her almost 16 years of being a paramedic, she says it remains her most traumatic case. Yet one that would become extraordinary for the right reasons after watching her patient turned friend embark on an incredible journey. “I find him to be so inspirational, and that gives me hope,” says White, now based in Bundaberg.

As Bennett shares his remarkable story of survival, it’s full of twists, turns, heartbreaks and triumphs. He visits the Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital three times a week for rehab, where he’s now learning to walk again with prosthetic legs.

He’s constantly reminded of all the things that were taken from him but he is only focused on the things he still has, fierce resolve and love for his family. Those are the things that kept him alive. They are what helped a fighter emerge from the fire.

It was August 5, 2020, a Wednesday. The day started full of hope, dreams and a future.

Bennett and Roni went to the bank in the morning to apply for a mortgage to build on their block of land in Elimbah, north of Caboolture. They had plans to make a family home on the .4ha of property.

Roni made Bennett a coffee to take on his drive to the depot, then Bennett left for his shift which started at 6pm.

Bennett had driven trucks for more than a decade and loved it. He’d worked in the coal mines in Emerald for years before taking up a job with Brisbane-based transport company Followmont Transport in 2012.

Most of the work was long-haul drives transporting fresh produce to and from Brisbane and around Australia. He found it therapeutic on the open road.

The truck Glen was in when he had his accident. Picture: Supplied

He’d put on his music, usually Eminem, Dr Dre or favourites, Hilltop Hoods, and drive.

This night, he rang Roni at 7pm, as he did on all his overnight drives, to say goodnight to Hugo.

Just as he was pulling into Gin Gin, just under five hours from Brisbane, for a break and a coffee, Roni called him to say goodnight.

She was the woman who changed his life. The pair met in 2016 via online dating app Plenty of Fish and instantly knew they were meant to be together.

Roni already had two kids now in their 20s from a previous relationship but when she met Bennett, couldn’t wait to have another child and when they had Hugo, he became their world.

As Bennett wished his wife good night as he always did, it was the last conversation they had in life as they knew it.

Glen with his wife, Roni, and their son, Hugo, before the accident.

The nightmare unfolded shortly after.

It was about 11pm, and Bennett was near Lowmead, about 31km south of Miriam Vale, between Bundaberg and Gladstone.

“I was driving along, and I came around a corner, and I remember seeing this thick blanket. I didn’t know if it was fog or smoke. I didn’t know what was going on,” Bennett says.

“I applied the brake straight away because I could barely see, and suddenly there were these trailer back doors in my face.”

Bennett later learned he’d slammed into the back of a B-double truck blocking the highway from an earlier incident. Police say there were four vehicles in total involved in the crash. Investigations are continuing.

The impact knocked Bennett out for what he thought was a few minutes. Enough time for all hell to break loose.

“When I woke up, the whole inside of my truck, including me, was on fire,” he says.

“It was panic stations then. The first thing I thought was, ‘I’m not ready to die.’

“I remember seeing the fire. It was coming up from the foot well. I was still sitting in the (driver) seat. I knew the fire was right there on me, but I didn’t know how bad it was.

“I had long pants on, and my pants were on fire, my boots were on fire. It was worse than I thought.”

He had seconds to get out of there so he flung himself out of the window and fell to the ground, the impact crushing his shoulder.

A stranger who stopped to help came to Bennett’s aid, pulling him further away from the fire. “He put his arms under my armpits and dragged me away from the fire because it was really hot, and he sat with me. The fire kept getting bigger and bigger, and the trailer started to go up. It was a huge fireball.”

The man stayed beside Bennett as they waited for the ambulance.

Back in Miriam Vale, Janelle White was at homewhen a job for a “vehicle accident” came in about 11.30pm. Nothing could have prepared her for what was coming.

“When I approached the scene, I describe it as Armageddon,” she says.

“There was Glen’s truck across the road that was fully engulfed in flames. There was a grass fire around the truck. It’s dark. It’s foggy. There were things exploding. It was Armageddon.”

Then, she met Bennett who had been pulled into the back of a Pajero.

“I can’t tell you what I thought, it’s a swear word. He was in a critical condition. I thought I had to get there and start. You just get in your work mind.”

The closest hospital was in Gladstone, an hour and a half away, backup crews were still an hour away, and the emergency helicopter couldn’t fly in the fog.

It was her and Bennett.

White found it comforting that he was talking to her, and she laughed, “He would never be quiet.” But as long as he was talking, he was alive.

But Bennett knew he was in trouble, and on the way to Gladstone Hospital in the ambulance, he asked White to call his wife.

Glen Bennett with his son Hugo in hospital after a horrific truck crash.

“When a patient asks you that, it’s very nerve-racking,” says White.
“You hate making those types of calls to let a family know.”

It was about 1am. Roni rolled over in bed to see her phone screen lit up, it was ringing.
She had one missed call already. Something was wrong.

“It was the ambulance officer, and she said, ‘I don’t want you to panic. I’m here with your husband, Glen. He’s been in quite a horrific accident … we can’t tell you a whole lot except he’s got extensive burns and multiple fractures. I’ll put him on the phone.’”

On the other end of the line was Bennett.

“I really thought I was going to die,” he says.
“I said I was sorry and I loved her. I thought that was the end of it. I remember I rang to apologise to her because I thought I was going to die and I was leaving her with Hugo.”

The conversation was brief, Roni recalls, but however shocking it was, it was enough to make her believe he would come home to her.

“I felt this sense of calmness,” says Roni, “like I knew he might come out of it really badly but I knew he would still be here.

“The fact he was able to speak to me, I knew he didn’t have brain damage or anything like that. I felt calm and like I knew he was going to be all right.”

Bennett was flown to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital and spent the next 24 days in a coma. He woke up to a cruel new reality.

“I was in shock that I was awake and alive, but then when I found out I had no legs and all these burns and breaks, I couldn’t believe how bad it was. It took me a week to finally realise I had no legs.”

He spent the next six months in the hospital, mainly in the burns unit, receiving treatments, rehabilitation and multiple surgeries.

Dr Jason Brown, RBWH’s director of the Professor Stuart Pegg Adult Burns Centre, says he’s met few like Bennett.

Glen Bennett with his wife Roni in hospital.

“They talk about third-degree burns, that is the lay term, but his was, and you rarely come across it, a fourth-degree burn which is where it is burnt muscle and bone and goes beyond the skin,” he says. “On top of that, he had other injuries … he needed multiple teams and specialists.” The pain, however, was only made worse by heartbreak.

It was the pandemic’s peak, and hospital visits and restrictions were at their strictest. Bennett didn’t see his son for almost three months. But back home, Roni was preparing Hugo for when he could see his dad again.

“I said Daddy has to stay in hospital for a while so the doctors can look after him and his injuries. I let him know his legs got such bad sores on them that the doctor had to take part of his legs off.

“He wanted to know all the details like ‘Where did they put the bits of legs?’” she laughs, “He still asks that question and says, ‘They didn’t just put them in the bin, did they?’”

Roni bought dolls in wheelchairs for Hugo to help him learn their new normal.

But when Hugo saw his dad for the first time, to him, nothing had changed.

His dad was still his hero.

Glen Bennett with his wife Roni and son Hugo as he learns to walk again with prosthetic legs.

“He sat at the bottom of my bed (when I was in the hospital), and he patted me on the stumps and said, ‘It will be OK, daddy’”, says Bennett through tears.

In the face of heartbreak, it was the strength he needed to ignite his fighting spirit and realise that maybe, just maybe, he would be OK.

As you walk through the hospital halls with Bennett, he’s met with a wave and smile from nearly everyone he passes. He’s a champion to them all.

“He’s had his challenges,” says Dr Brown, “But I think what’s impressive is the way he approaches things. He never lets things get him down. He fights and is pushing hard to get back as normal a life as he can.”

The family are not far off moving into their new home in Elimbah, the same one they saw the bank about the morning of the accident, plans for which have been modified to suit Bennett’s needs, and he is learning to walk again. He knows the road ahead is full of hurdles, and his dreams have shifted.

Now it’s being able to stand up to cook in the kitchen with his family but as he slowly rebuilds his life, the picture he sees is also changing.

When Bennett closes his eyes, he can see hope and a future.

He sees himself beside Roni and Hugo. He knows they will always help him find the light in the dark.