It took only seconds for a routine drive in Conway, South Carolina, to turn into a fight for survival.
Steve Howell, 73, had been heading back to Bucksport on Saturday afternoon after picking up a lawnmower when he lost control of his 1977 Ford truck at about 5 p.m.
Howell said the trailer attached to the truck began to sway uncontrollably.
“The truck spun around and did a 180 and headed for the ditch,” Howell recalled to WBTW. “And the truck flipped with me… dislocated both shoulders and one of my hips.”
The crash left Howell seriously injured and unable to move. Trapped inside the overturned truck, he watched smoke rise from under the hood.
That smoke then turned into flames.
“I knew if I didn’t get out I was going to die,” Howell said. “I could not move my arms. I was totally helpless. And the smoke and flames was getting worse and worse.”
Howell said he was alone and had no way to escape as the fire moved closer to the truck’s fuel tank.
“I was afraid at any minute the gas tank was going to blow up,” he said. “What was going through my mind was I was going to burn to death.”
With the truck overturned and his injuries stopping him from moving, Howell said he began to pray.
A short time later, he saw something outside the driver’s side window.
“I looked up next to the driver’s side window and I saw the blue sky,” Howell said. “And then I saw two guys looking down through the window at me.”
The two men were strangers, but Howell said they acted immediately.
“They pulled me out of the truck… burning truck… just in time,” Howell said. “We were strangers. They didn’t owe me a favor, but out of the goodness of their heart, they risked their life to pull me out… and they risked their life to save my life.”
Howell said the men pulled him through the driver’s side window and got him away from the truck just before the fire fully engulfed the vehicle.
The flames also began spreading to the nearby woods.
Emergency crews arrived shortly afterward, but Howell’s rescue had already happened by then.
For Howell, the timing of the rescue is something he has no doubt about.
“God sent them along at the right time at the last minute, or I would not be here today,” he said.
Howell had been on his way home after what had started as an ordinary Saturday errand. Instead, he ended up trapped inside an overturned truck, badly hurt and unable to use his arms as smoke and flames grew around him.
He said he believed he was about to die inside the burning vehicle.
Then two men he did not know appeared at the window and pulled him out.
Howell said they got him to safety just before the fire consumed the truck.
“They pulled me out of the truck… burning truck… just in time,” Howell said. “We were strangers. They didn’t owe me a favor, but out of the goodness of their heart, they risked their life to pull me out… and they risked their life to save my life.”
