Roadside inferno 火海救援

Looks like a brush fire（灌木丛火灾）, Kim Cooper thought as she spotted¹ an orange glow ahead on Interstate 75. It was near dusk（黄昏） , and she and her husband, Steve, were trucking through northern Kentucky hauling（搬运，牵引） auto² parts from Louisville to Detroit for a freight（货运） company. Steve, 59, was fast asleep in the truck's living quarters as Kim, 52, drove up to the scene. That's when she saw it was much worse than a brush fire.

"Steve, wake up!" she shouted. "There's a truck on fire!" A big rig had tumbled down（破败） an embankment（路堤） , and flames were crawling across its cab. Kim yanked（猛拉） their truck to the side of the road, and Steve pulled on（戴，穿） his clothes. Then he scrambled³ down the slope.

Inside the burning truck, Ronnie Sanders, 38, was fighting for his life. He'd been running a heavy load of tractors and forklifts（铲车） from Georgia to Indianapolis when a Grand Caravan⁴ in front of him stopped suddenly in traffic on the icy road. As Ronnie bore down, he could see children in the backseat. The truck's bulk（体积，容量） would probably protect him from the worst of the impact, but the momentum⁵ of 23 tons would likely crush everyone inside the van.

"In Kentucky, the hills are steep, but at that moment, I didn't think about it," he says of that evening last November. "I figured instead of killing⁶ other people, I'd just put the truck in the ditch（沟渠，壕沟） ." He jerked（猛拉，痉挛） the wheel to the right, somehow keeping the truck upright as it plowed⁷ 60 feet down the embankment. At the bottom, rocks pierced a fuel tank, which ignited（点燃，燃烧） . A tree branch smashed through the windshield（挡风玻璃） and knocked Ronnie unconscious. He came to a couple of minutes later to find the cab in flames and his legs on fire.

Ronnie yelled for help as he struggled to escape. But the cab was smashed in, and try as he might, he couldn't untangle（清理，整顿） himself from his seat belt.

As Steve bolted down the slope, he could hear Ronnie's cries ahead. Then a thundering sound erupted behind him.

A Ford⁸ Taurus, which had lost control in the melee⁹（混战，格斗） above, had skidded¹⁰ off the highway and was now barreling down the slope directly at him. With no time to dive out of the way, he leaped upward and sailed over the car's hood¹¹.

The Taurus came to a halt close to the truck. Kim was already scrambling¹² toward the car. Its passengers appeared shaken but unharmed as she helped maneuver¹³（演习，调遣） the car away from the burning truck. Meanwhile, Steve dashed to Ronnie, who was dangling¹⁴ headfirst from the passenger door. Ronnie had used his pocketknife to cut himself free from the driver's-side seat belt only to get his boot ensnared（诱入陷阱） in another one. Steve climbed into the burning cab to free him.

"All that was going through my mind was, My God, I do not want to be here," Steve recalls. "It was so hot, I could hardly stand it."

He tried three times to pull Ronnie out before finally freeing him. But Ronnie's legs were still burning, so Steve laid him on the ground, ripped off his own shirt, and beat the flames with it. He'd managed to drag him about 20 yards when one of the truck's 150-gallon fuel tanks exploded.

"It was like a cannon¹⁵（大炮） blast," says Steve. "The percussive¹⁶（敲击的，冲击的） force hurt my chest. It just picked me up and blew me back." Fortunately, the explosion was aimed skyward.

Steve got up and peeled off（剥去，脱掉） what was left of Ronnie's smoldering¹⁷（闷烧，阴燃） jeans and held his hand while they waited for the ambulance, as Kim raced up and down the slope, grabbing wet towels and a blanket.

Both Steve and Ronnie paid a price for risking their lives for strangers. Ronnie spent two months in the hospital and received skin grafts¹⁸（植皮手术） on both of his legs. He now wears compression garments（服装，衣着） for his scars and gets physical therapy twice a week. "If Steve hadn't done what he did, I probably would have been toast（烘，烤） ," he says. Steve suffered smoke inhalation and minor¹⁹ burns, and shrapnel（弹片） from the explosion broke a tooth.

In February, the Coopers received a Hero of the Highway award from the Open Road Foundation for rescuing an injured driver. Steve insists Ronnie is the real hero: "If he hadn't gone into the ditch, he would have hit that van. It was his decision to drive off the road."

"I feel pretty good about it," says Ronnie. "A lot of people could have been hurt."