Someone get this man a medal.
Queenslander Athen Barnaby yesterday pulled off some straight-up superhero shit, when he climbed up to the cab of a burning truck wearing nothing but “one inch thick” thongs to rescue the 60-year-old driver.
He was one of several witnesses to the horror truck crash on the M1 bridge over the Nerang river yesterday, where a truck slammed into a guard rail, rolled, and burst into flames.
“As soon as that happened I stopped, I jumped out,” Barnaby told TODAY. “I tried to figure out what was going on, I couldn’t see him at first.”
Looks like there’s a nasty truck fire on the M1 at Nerang. @9NewsGoldCoast pic.twitter.com/E8IaZJG7yW
— Brendon Wolf (@BrendonWolf9) February 2, 2016
What was going on was that the elderly driver was trapped inside with a broken leg, while the truck burnt around him. Barnaby and other witnesses were doing their damnedest to put out the flames in order to give the driver time to get out.
“When we saw him popped out [of the window] we were all yelling at him saying ‘Mate you gotta get outta there, this thing’s gonna blow’, and he was yelling back that he couldn’t see, he couldn’t see.”
The driver managed to get himself out the window, but no further.
“He sat there for a good 30 seconds, a minute,” Barnaby guessed. “I couldn’t watch him get burnt so I took it on me, I jumped straight up.”
Just to repeat: he climbed onto a burning truck to save a total stranger with nothing but thongs to protect his feet.
“I didn’t feel the heat much at all, I think it was just the adrenaline,” he said. “I had my thick thongs on, and I just climbed straight up whenever I could find that angle.
“That’s all I had – [they were] one inch think. I lost the other half by the way!”
“I couldn’t watch him get burnt, so I just jumped up… I was in the right place at the right time, and I would have done it ten times over”. Athen Barnaby rescued a driver from a burning truck in Queensland yesterday. He’s so humble and he’s our hero! #Today9
Posted by TODAY on Tuesday, 2 February 2016
The driver is in hospital suffering a broken leg and burns, but is expected to make a full recovery. Investigators are looking into what caused the crash.
The crash caused total gridlock until the wee hours of this morning, when investigators determined the lanes safe to reopen around 4am.
Special mention also goes out to this woman, who filled her car with water bottles and handed them out to motorists stuck in the traffic. #NotAllHeroesWearThongs
“This kind lady filled up her car with slabs of bottled water and gave them out to the motorists stuck at Nerang, QLD,…
Posted by TODAY on Tuesday, 2 February 2016
Photo: Reddit.
