A Toronto man and two others are being credited with saving the life of a driver who they pulled from his burning vehicle Saturday on the Queen Elizabeth Way just seconds before it was engulfed in flames.The driver was in the eastbound lanes near Gilmore Rd. in Fort Erie around 9 a.m. when his SUV swerved into the ditch that separates the lanes and flew into the air.George Bailey, who lives at Keele St. and Sheppard Ave. and was on his way to Buffalo to pick up his young son, was in the westbound lanes and watched as the vehicle rotated in the air towards him and stopped on the pavement five feet in front of him.“He hit the road and the SUV was rolling right at me,” says Bailey. “I was thinking, ‘Where am I going to go?’”Bailey, a caretaker with the Simcoe District School Board, stopped his Honda Civic and got out to help the driver.“He was pretty much out of it at first,” said Bailey, 53. When the man came to, Bailey urged him to stay in the vehicle until emergency crews arrived.Two truckers who were travelling behind the SUV pulled over and joined Bailey.Jeremy Hager was on his second week of the job with Earl Paddock Transportation and was coming back from the U.S. followed by Darrin Martin, a 49-year-old resident of St. Catharines, who also drives for the company.Martin said it was just luck that they were there – they should have crossed the border on Friday night but there was a delay loading their cargo in Philadelphia and they didn’t reach it until Saturday morning.When he got to the SUV, Martin said he smelled smoke and saw flames under the hood. He told Hager to run to their trucks to get their fire extinguishers. Meanwhile, Martin and Bailey pried open the passenger door, which popped open on the “tenth try.” Martin began dragging the man out while Hager worked the fire extinguisher. All three eventually helped get the driver out.Ten seconds later, Bailey said the entire front of ...
|
