Passersby who defied the advice of emergency services when they attempted to rescue five people from a burning vehicle on the Sea-to-Sky Highway in B.C. are now being hailed as heroes.
New Zealand couple Stephanie Saxton and Buddy Harwood said they were on their way to Whistler, B.C., when a cloud of dust alerted them to a vehicle flipped over, and engulfed in flames on the side of the road.
The couple immediately stopped their car to help.
In a Facebook post written just hours after the crash, Saxton described how her boyfriend and another motorist named Mike raced down the roadside embankment to the burning vehicle.
“I quickly called 9-1-1 and the lady was telling me not to let the boys near the car,” Saxton wrote.
But after noticing a young boy trapped inside the vehicle, Saxton said Harwood and the other motorist smashed one of the car’s windows with a rock.
Another man arrived at the scene with a fire extinguisher and sprayed the car for a few minutes, she added, while another man tossed Harwood a knife which he used to cut driver’s seatbelt.
“The flames were just getting big, they were starting to catch on, it was getting ridiculous,” Harwood told CTV Vancouver. “So I just grabbed him, pulled him out, grabbed the mom, left and just screamed ‘get up the hill’ because the car was just about to go.”
In total, five people were pulled from the car, Saxton said.
“Right when he got to the top of the embankment the car had exploded!” Saxton wrote on Facebook. “Honestly, this was by far the scariest and most life-threatening thing I have ever seen.”
One of the passengers succumbed to his injuries. The four other passengers were transported to hospital with a range of injuries.
Police told CTV News they believe all five passengers would have died in the vehicle if not for the several Good Samaritans, including an off-duty doctor and nurse, who helped the passengers involved in the car crash.
With files from CTV Vancouver
