Charles Salameh, a senior IT executive from Ancaster, Ontario, was returning from a weekend in Toronto with his wife when, around 9:30 a.m. Monday, the car in front of him began to slow down and swerved sharply. on the road.
He drove “erratically” in front of it west on QEW until he suddenly sped up, driving through a series of construction signs, Salameh said.
Eventually the car came to a stop in the median and smoke began to billow from the vehicle. “We saw the car in a final position, completely wrecked and I was right behind it,” Salameh told Global News.
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His wife called 911 and Salameh went to see what had happened to the car and its driver. As he walked to the car, Salameh said a passing driver rolled down his window and yelled “fire!”
Emergency services were unable to immediately reach the scene, around QEW and Cawthra Road, as the fire began to spread. Mississauga Fire Captain Chris Ogg told Global News that access to the area is particularly difficult.
When firefighters finally arrived, driving the wrong way down the freeway entrance ramp, Salameh and two other passing civilians had rescued the mostly uninjured driver from his burned-out car.
“I was shocked. The car was completely destroyed, there was nothing left of it,” Ogg said, adding that in his 28-year career he “had never seen anything like it.”
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Salameh and two other men, Fabricio and Tyler, according to Mississauga Fire, tried to force open the car door to free the driver as the flames began to rise, before emergency services arrived.
One person passed by and offered a hammer from his truck to help break the glass, Salameh said.
One of the two men working with Salameh to complete the rescue ran to the passenger side of the car, trying to rescue the driver who was still restrained by his seat belt when flames entered the interior of the vehicle.
“(He) ran to the other side of the car; now the car is, he would say, 50 percent on fire,” Salameh said. (He) opened the passenger door, got into the car… when he got into the car, the flames went into the car.”
The driver’s seat belt was released and the three were able to drag him out of the car, Salameh said, with seconds to spare.
“The flames rose, rose, rose. We managed to get him out, he was completely dead weight, we got him out of the car and into my truck. And I would say that 10 seconds later, the car was completely submerged. He was 10 seconds away from being literally burned alive.”
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The driver escaped with first-degree burns to his face and arms, according to the Mississauga Fire Department.
Ogg estimated that the flames from the car could have reached 1,000 degrees Celsius, with further dangers posed by exploding tires and the car’s fuel tank leaking.
“The heat produced and the toxic fumes produced during a car fire — getting in there without gear (is unbelievable),” he said, pointing to the extensive protective gear worn by firefighters.
Salameh said the biggest hero was the man who released the driver’s seat belt through the passenger door.
“The guy who got into the car on the passenger side, who was wearing a black shirt, a bald guy, as soon as we were done, he just said, ‘Good job guys, we have to go.’ He was like this angel, he just showed up and jumped into a burning car.”
All three have now been nominated for the Fire Chief Commendation Award, a nomination that Mississauga Fire Chief Deryn Rizzi said he supports.
“All three of them deserve it, they saved a life today,” Ogg said.
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