Arizona man heroically saves two toddlers moments before vehicle engulfed in flames explodes on remote highway
- Sam Heiler, 30, was traveling for Memorial Day weekend with his wife Melissa when the car in front of them caught fire
- The parents in the car in front jumped out but the doors automatically locked behind them, leaving their two children inside.
- Heiler sprang into action and managed to smash the car’s front windows and unlock the doors from the inside.
An Arizona man heroically rescued two young girls from the back of a car that was engulfed in flames moments after catching fire.
Sam Heiler, 30, was heading to a Memorial Weekend getaway Thursday night with his wife Melissa in Navajo County, Arizona.
The two were on a remote stretch of highway when the car in front of them, carrying a family of four, caught fire.
Talk to FoxNewsHeiler said the two girls’ parents got out of their front seats and closed their doors, which instantly locked their two daughters in the backseat.
He said: ‘Parents were panicking, screaming and banging windows with their bare hands, both rear windows in front of babies’
Sam Heiler and his wife Melissa, pictured, were traveling on the remote Navajo County Highway when the car caught fire
The family’s car was completely engulfed in flames after Heiler managed to rescue the two young girls inside
Dramatic footage captured after the heroic footage shows the black car completely engulfed in flames, with the rear doors the girls escaped from still open.
Heiler continued, “They had about 20 more seconds until the fire spread from the engine block to the cabin.
“The girls were screaming, the parents were screaming, my wife was screaming, it was bad. When the fire hit the fuel tank, it caused a real fireball explosion.
Sam threw a rock through a front window, breaking the glass to open the doors from inside, and saved the children.
Reserve police eventually arrived on the scene and within hours of the incident, fires broke out in the area after spreading from the car.
Heiler told Fox News he had to open the car’s front window to manually open the car doors, saving the children.
The stretch of road, pictured here, was littered with small fires in the hours that followed
It comes after California firefighters rescued a group of people from a car bomb caught in floodwaters earlier this year.
The clip, shared by the Orange County Fire Authority, showed an adult sitting in a rescued car and four adults inside a rescued car waiting on an exit ramp to the 55 Freeway.
A total of five people were rescued and transported from the scene in Tustin.
