City workers bust tail for all of us. Last winter, I watched my neighbor Steve Riordan plow miles of City roads working around the clock; Water Department teams repaired burst water lines in Morgan Park in sub-zero weather. Today, the Tribune reports about Dan Green who pulled a man from a blazing wreck.
A city water management worker on his way to an overnight shift late Sunday rescued a man whose pickup truck slammed into a metal bridge support beam and burst into flames in the Brighton Park neighborhood, police said.
Just before 11 p.m., Daniel Green, 36, an emergency crew dispatcher for the Department of Water Management, was stopped at the eastbound traffic light on Pershing Road at Western Avenue when a northbound Ford F150 crashed into a support beam. Within a minute, the truck was engulfed in flames, said Green.
"I didn't really pay attention until he hit the pole," said Green in the parking lot of his job just after midnight Monday.
Green and a bystander rushed to help the man, who appeared to be in his 60s or 70s. The two forced the driver's side door open. About eight men then carried the unconscious man to a nearby sidewalk and waited for paramedics to arrive. "This guy was dead if we didn't get him out," said Green, adding that the man was slumped over the steering wheel.
Police at the crash scene said the man was semi- conscious when paramedics took him to a hospital.
Preliminary reports said witnesses saw the truck slam into a bridge support beam from an overhead railroad, said Police News Affairs Officer Amina Greer. The man was taken in stable condition to Mount Sinai Hospital, Greer said.
Police called Green, "a good Samaritan," who pulled the man from the truck before it became fully engulfed in flames, she said.
