Firefighter rescues woman from SUV on fire after crash

A volunteer firefighter is being credited by police with helping to save the life of a 22-year-old woman after he battled bushes and branches to pull the screaming injured driver from a burning Jeep SUV south of Nanaimo.

The woman was taken to hospital with burns, lacerations and broken bones, say RCMP.

Shortly after midnight on Saturday, Mark McCallum, 25, heard a loud crash that sounded as though a tree had come down, and the sound of a truck racing by. Then the power went out.

He looked out and spotted a fire down a nearby hill.

He called the East Wellington Volunteer Fire Department, where he’s a volunteer, but did not go to the hall for protective gear because there wasn’t time.

McCallum drove to the scene and met neighbour Shane Smart, who told him a person was trapped inside a vehicle.

Smart said he arrived first on the scene to find the vehicle under a tree.

He crawled into the ditch where the vehicle had come to rest and tried but failed to open the passenger door, which seemed to be pinned shut by branches. “It was quite a hot fire already.”

He heard a young voice calling “Get us out of here,” so he assumed there was more than one person trapped inside. “All the air bags had been deployed, so you couldn’t get through the windows.”

The fire was spreading rapidly. “I started screaming as loud as I could for help … Because I knew I need more than just myself.” At that point, McCallum arrived.

McCallum says he immediately went toward the vehicle because only the engine hood was on fire. “I knew that there was a bit of time — that it was somewhat safe to approach the vehicle.”

He heard the woman “hysterically screaming” and went through bushes and moved branches covering the SUV to yank open the passenger door. He called out to find where she was in the smoky vehicle.

“She was out of her seatbelt at that point and then she started crawling over to me.” Light from the fire helped McCallum to see her on the driver’s side.

He pulled the woman out of the vehicle and carried her uphill to the road. “She was in quite a bit of pain at that point. I noticed a bunch of cuts to her face and arms and knew that we had to get her away from the vehicle.”

While another neighbour assisted McCallum, Smart said he checked to make sure there were no other passengers who had been thrown out of the vehicle.

Paramedics arrived shortly afterward and took the woman to the hospital, he said. By the time the fire department arrived, the Jeep was engulfed in flames.

Another vehicle pulled up and Smart spoke to some young men. It appeared the injured woman had been at a party with the young men before the crash.

McCallum said he was trained to put safety first, and assessed the risk quickly before he acted. “It just had to get done and there wasn’t really anybody else to turn to at that point. I had the most experience in order to deal with that.”

McCallum says his father, who is the fire department’s assistant chief, was the reason he joined the department more than seven years ago.

During the school year, McCallum studies business management at Vancouver Island University, and he’s now working full-time in an automotive repair shop in the administrative and sales area.

The driver’s mother contacted McCallum the following day to thank him and said her daughter has some broken bones.

Fire department Capt. Darcy Morgan, who arrived at the scene in the second fire truck, said a police officer who was there told him that without McCallum, there would have been a “very negative outcome.”

“Firefighter McCallum is in unbelievable shape and he’s about as strong as a bull, so he got in there,” said Morgan, who used a chainsaw to cut large branches off the vehicle.

While McCallum was responding as a civilian in this case, because he hadn’t been to the hall first, he’s a “huge asset to the team,” Morgan said. “He takes on anything that we can that we throw at him.”

Morgan said the road splits into a Y at the accident site, and it appeared the driver did not make the corner and hit a tree with many branches, which then fell on the vehicle.

Nanaimo RCMP spokesman Const. Gary O’Brien said the vehicle might have hit a power pole as well, adding police suspect alcohol was a contributing factor in the crash. The investigation is continuing.

RCMP are looking at acknowledging the efforts of the bystanders, including McCallum, who “undoubtedly saved that woman’s life,” O’Brien said.