By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Longtime Hillsborough fireman Ron Campbell was home enjoying turkey on Thanksgiving Day, more than three weeks after being injured while fighting a post-Superstorm Sandy house fire in Branchburg.
Mr. Campbell, 78, was knocked off his feet when something hit him in or near the eye as he was supervising the emptying of water from a tanker truck at the scene of the fire on Sunrise Way near the intersection of Pleasant Run Road, said his wife, Vivian.
When the alarm went out at 1 a.m. Oct. 3, Mr. Campbell said, “I drive the tanker. I’d better go,” recalled his wife. He had made one run, filling a portable pool from which fire fighters pulled water to battle the blaze. After a second run, he was standing next to the filling pool when something hit him. He fell backwards, hitting his head on pavement, she said.
He was rushed to the Hunterdon Medical Center by the Branchburg Rescue Squad. An MRI indicated bleeding in the brain, Mrs. Campbell said.
After stabilizing, Mr. Campbell was transferred to Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, where he was in the highest critical care unit for two days, according to his wife.
She said her husband has been diagnosed with apahasia, and has trouble retrieving the proper word. On Monday night, she said her husband had made change at a fruit stand, which encouraged her.
”He’s just frustrated because he doesn’t see the progress I see,” said Mrs. Campbell, a retired reading teacher. “He was very altered in the beginning; I could hardly understand him in the first hospital. It’s going to take months.”
After in-patient rehab at JFK Hospital in Edison, he’s starting outpatient therapy for balance and speech issues, she said.
Mr. Campbell, who has been a member of the Woods Road Fire Company for nearly 50 years, also handles radio maintenance for the township fire companies.Mrs. Campbell was extremely appreciative of firefighters and Woods Road neighbors who came to her house in the days following the storm to clean up storm debris and an oak tree that had fallen across the property, almost hitting the house.
The fire seemed to have started when a man tried to fill a running generator in his garage the day after the Sandy storm blew through, Mrs. Campbell said she was told.A homemade holiday meal was a good tonic for Mr. Campbell, who lost about 20 pounds in the hospital, said his wife.

