Off-duty firefighter's instincts kicked in when he saw a woman's car burst into flames: 'I got to get her out'
A firefighter found himself at the right time at the right time while he was off duty. He saw a car crash while coming back from a wedding with his partner. Andrew Nixon, who was off-duty at that time, had mere seconds to react as he saw the car crash and catch fire soon after. The car's driver was unconscious when Nixon reached her. But then his quick actions helped save the driver's life, per Fox 8 Live.
The car had crashed into an 18-wheeler right in front of Nixon's eyes on his way home. "All I saw was her just veering off to the left and I had seen that her tires were on fire," Nixon recounted. He immediately ran up to the car to check on the woman. "I run up to the car. I'm trying to ask her, 'Are you all right? Is anyone else in the car?' But she's not answering. So, I ran around to the other side, to the right passenger side and honestly, I had tunnel vision. I started freaking out and I was like, 'I got to get her out, some kind of way.'" The man slammed on the windshield to try to get the woman out of the car. But when he tried to peel it off, he realized that he wouldn't be able to get her out that way.
The fire was fast approaching the inside of the car and Nixon was running out of time. "I see the flames coming into the car. So, I knew I had to get her out right then and there, or else she wouldn't have made it. I grabbed her and somehow, by the grace of God, I literally lifted her up, pulled her out the top of the door and brought her to the side. And in the photo, you can see that I'm talking to her. That's seconds after I pulled her out. But she literally had seconds before that car was fully engulfed."
"His instincts took over. His training took over. He went straight into her car and did whatever it took to get her out. Because he knew if he didn’t, she wasn’t going to make it. He was her last chance," Chris Kaufmann, chief of St. Tammany Fire Protection District No. 1, remarked. The chief shared that the woman wouldn't have been alive if she had remained in the car till the time the fire crew arrived. But it wasn't just a big moment for the woman who had been saved. The incident also helped Nixon, who had been grieving the loss of his little niece, Everleigh, after she drowned in a pool in April this year.
"She drowned in a pool. And I remember, every single day, saying I wish I could just grab her and pick her up. And I feel like in that moment, God and Everleigh were with me and helped me lift the driver up out of that car," Nixon expressed. "It helped me a lot. It definitely did. I needed that. It just felt good to actually save somebody." The driver was being treated at a New Orleans hospital and was recovering well after the incident. Nixon also sustained cuts in his hands as he tried to break the windshield, but he was doing well otherwise.
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