3 Men Brave Flames to Rescue Woman Trapped in Crushed Car : Accident: The three are hailed as heroes by an officer who said the car could have exploded at any moment.

By JAMES M. GOMEZ

Oct. 29, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

LAGUNA HILLS — Three men braved a wall of fire and intense heat Monday to pull a woman from her burning car after a runaway truck careened down an off-ramp and toppled onto the auto, police said.

“They risked their lives, there’s no doubt about that,” California Highway Patrol Officer Marc Mudrick said. “The truck could have exploded. Anything could have happened.”

Susan Morgan, 28, of Trabuco Canyon was treated at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center for cuts and scrapes and released. She would have died in the fire that destroyed both vehicles and took almost an hour to put out, Mudrick said.

The 11 a.m. accident just off Interstate 5 closed Avenida de la Carlota, which runs parallel to the freeway, and the El Toro Road southbound exit for three hours, tying up traffic on both the freeway and surface streets near the Laguna Hills Mall.

Joseph Bailey III, 56, of Hawthorne said he was driving his bobtail truck off the freeway when it appeared to lose its brakes. He said that he tried to maintain control of the truck while turning left onto Avenida de la Carlota.

But the truck, going about 40 m.p.h., skidded to the right as it made the sharp turn and sideswiped Morgan’s car, he said. The truck then flipped sideways as it struck the curb and landed on her car.

Unhurt but badly shaken, Bailey jumped out of the truck before the fire started.

“I’m lucky I didn’t kill 10 people,” he said a few minutes later. “I’m lucky I didn’t kill myself.”

In the meantime, three men saw Morgan’s car begin to smolder and burn with her trapped inside.

“The guy (Bailey) got out OK,” Richard Boen said. “But she did not.”

Boen, Lynn (Doc) Dull and Kevin Sliter jumped out of their autos, ripped open the crushed car door, freed her of her seat belt, untangled her legs from the gear shift and managed to get her out of the car before it became engulfed in flames, authorities said.

“I ran a red light to get to her,” Dull said.

All three men have medical backgrounds but did not know each other. Boen said he is a former paramedic, and Sliter and Dull both said they are nurses.

While they rescued Morgan, another bystander sprinted to the nearby fire station and alerted authorities there.

By the time firefighters arrived, Morgan was sitting under a nearby tree, Capt. Dan Young of the Orange County Fire Department said.

Firefighters struggled for almost an hour to control a 200-foot-long wall of flames fed by about 100 gallons of fuel which had spilled from the truck’s crushed tank. As the flaming fuel crept toward El Toro Road, firefighters and hazardous-materials units quickly threw up dirt barriers to stop it.

“It was rather exciting for a period of time,” Young said.

Both the car and the truck, engulfed in flames fanned by Santa Ana winds, melted in the heat, Young said.

Mudrick said that it was not immediately known if the truck, owned by Quality Trucking and carrying computer parts, had indeed lost its brakes. The department’s commercial vehicle unit was inspecting the truck, looking for any malfunctions, he said.

“I don’t know what caused it,” Mudrick said. “It is all still under investigation.”