Good samaritans rescue woman from burning car

"THEY SAVED A WOMAN'S LIFE"

By Charlotte Helston

Another minute and the men who pulled a woman out of a burning car would have been too late.

Around 9:30 p.m. last Friday, Daniel Balcaen and Kevin Meda pulled an elderly woman from her car just moments before it burst into flames on Hwy 6.

"According to witnesses, just a minute or two later, the car was fully engulfed in flames," Lumby Cpl. Henry Proce says. "She wouldn't have made it."

The woman was trapped in her car when Balcaen and Meda arrived. The men broke the window and bent back the door frame to get her out.

The woman sustained non-life threatening injuries, and was still in the ICU at Vernon Jubilee Hospital on March 7. But she's alive.

"She told me that as the men were getting her out, (they were) telling her "you're going to make it," Proce says. They kept their promise. "They saved a woman's life."

It was extremely lucky that Balcaen and Meda were driving by when they did. "The highway would have been pretty dead at that time," Proce says.

Proce applauds the men for their good deed. "It's the appropriate thing to do, you'd be remiss to walk away. In this case, we're lucky because they were uninjured."

To contact the reporter for this story, email Charlotte Helston at chelston@infotelnews.ca or call (250)309-5230