A quick-thinking fisherman has been hailed a hero after he grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused a burning car to save the man inside.
Due to the heroic efforts of Simon Jenke and his cousin, the 25-year-old driver was pulled from wreckage in the South n town of Waikerie, which sits 82km north east of Adelaide, and was flown to hospital on Saturday.
Mr Jenke said he was fuelling his boat for a family fishing trip on the River Murray when he heard a big ‘thud’.
He looked around and saw a car had smashed into a power pole and was ablaze with the driver trapped inside.
Fisherman Simon Jenke (pictured left) ran to get a fire extinguisher from a service station when he saw a man trapped in a burning car
Mr Jenke grabbed a fire extinguisher from a nearby service station before he and his cousin ran over to help the man.
‘My cousin had him and was pulling his leg out, he was trapped, because we didn’t know if the fire was going to take hold again,’ Mr Jenke said.
‘And when you hear the sirens coming you know everything’s going to be alright.’
The pair tried to reassure the man, whose leg was pinned under the mangled front of the car, that he would be OK.
Country Fire Service officer Graeme Ward said Mr Jenke’s intervention was crucial.
‘The person at the service station grabbed the fire extinguisher and ran down here and put the fire out probably save the bloke’s life,’ Mr Ward said.
The driver, who was the sole occupant of the vehicle, has been transported by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, where he was expected to undergo surgery on Saturday night.
It is believed the man suffered a medical episode causing him to crash.
Due to the efforts of Mr Jenke and his cousin the injured man was pulled from the mangled vehicle
Mr Jenke said things could have been much worse.
‘If he hadn’t have hit that pole he would have gone over a vacant lot of dirt and straight over the cliff into the river,’ Mr Jenke said.
‘I reckon his name might have been lucky.’