Positivity: ‘The Fireman Who Saved Me from Being Crushed’
October 30, 2006
A TAXI driver who miraculously escaped after a skip fell from a lorry on to her cab has thanked the “guardian angel” firefighter who saved her.
Sharon Bain, 44, was trapped by her steering wheel for more than four hours while fire crews painstakingly cut through the wreckage to free her. The firefighter who helped rescue her said it was the worst accident he had seen where the victim survived.
For all the time she was stuck there, David Carey, 43, crouched beside the grandmother-of-three, holding her hand and keeping her calm.
The silver Hackney cab was driving up Abbeyhill towards London Road when it met a lorry carrying two skips heading in the opposite direction on October 20.
The skips hit a bridge and fell on top of the taxi while the lorry careered on to its side. The taxi’s passengers, a woman and her nine-year-old twins, managed to crawl free from the back of the cab.
Ms Bain met crew commander Mr Carey at Marionville Fire Station where he works. It was the first time they had come face to face because during her ordeal her head was jammed to one side by the weight of the skip.
“I’ll never forget him. He’ll be my hero until the day I die. I could just hear his voice and feel his hands,” she said.
“It was a miracle and Dave was my guardian angel.”
Although her taxi was destroyed, the City Cabs driver, whose feet were caught under the pedals while the skip pressed on the steering wheel, amazingly only suffered a broken rib and severe bruising.
She said that what she remembered most were the trains rumbling overhead.
“The trains were really frightening,” she said.
Mr Carey, who has been a firefighter for 20 years, telephoned her in hospital the day after the accident and the pair agreed to meet the next week.
He said: “I thought she’d broken her legs at least, but she told me she was getting out of hospital that day. The skip landed on the car, completely encasing it. We had no doors to work with because the near side was pinned against the railings and the skip was on the other side.”
The crew cut through the back of the cab and roof and clambered through the wreckage.
Mr Carey said: “I leant through the window and held her hands. I kept telling her how impressed I was that she was so calm.
“I tried to put myself in Sharon’s situation but you can’t imagine how frightening it was. She was amazingly brave. I promised her we’d meet up when she got out. It’s very emotional for me to meet her again,” he said.
It was the second serious car accident for the Tranent woman, who had a metal plate put in her shoulder after a bus hit her car in Spain in 1989.
But she said she would not be put off driving and hoped to be back in the taxi she owns with her partner Martin Wilson, 39, again soon.
“I love my job and I want to get back behind the wheel,” she said.
She also revealed that while she was trapped in the cab her meter kept running and eventually totted up a bill of £143.
