Arizona man heroically saves two toddlers just before the vehicle goes up in flames on a remote highway
- Sam Heiler, 30, was traveling with wife Melissa for Memorial Day Weekend when the car in front of them caught fire
- The parents in the car in front of them jumped out, but the doors automatically locked behind them, letting their two children in
- Heiler sprang into action and managed to smash the car’s windshields and unlock the doors from the inside
An Arizona man heroically rescued two young girls from the back of a car that went up in flames moments after it caught fire.
Sam Heiler, 30, had driven to a Memorial Weekend outing with his wife Melissa in Navajo County, Arizona, on Thursday night.
The two were on a remote stretch of highway when the car in front of them, containing a family of four, caught fire.
Speak against Fox newsHeiler said the parents of the two girls got out of their front seats and closed their doors, immediately trapping their two girls in the backseat.
He said: ‘The parents were in a panic, screaming and banging their bare hands on the windows, both back windows in front of the babies’
Sam Heiler and his wife Melissa, pictured, were driving on the remote highway through Navajo County when the car caught fire
The family’s car went up in flames after Heiler managed to save the two young girls inside
Dramatic footage shot after the heroic footage shows the black car completely engulfed in flames, with the rear doors from which the girls escaped still open.
Heiler continued, “They had about 20 seconds left before the fire spread from the engine block to the cab.
“The girls were screaming, the parents were screaming, my wife was screaming – it was bad. When the fire hit the fuel tank, it caused a legitimate fireball explosion.”
Sam threw a rock through a windshield, broke the glass to open the doors from the inside, and saved the kids.
Reserve police eventually arrived on the scene, and hours after the incident, fires broke out in the area after spreading from the car.
Heiler told Fox News that he had to break the car’s windshield to manually open the car doors and save the kids
The stretch of road, pictured here, was riddled with small fires in the hours that followed
It comes after California firefighters rescued a group of people from a trapped car that became trapped in floodwaters earlier this year.
The clip, shared by the Orange County Fire Department, showed an adult sitting on a car being rescued and four adults in a car being rescued as they waited for an exit onto Highway 55.
A total of five people were rescued and transported from the Tustin crime scene.