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All first responders pledge to put their lives on the line to protect all of us, and one local firefighter and his crew are being credited with a life-saving rescue.
An Orlando firefighter gave up his own oxygen mask to save a woman from a fiery car crash.
“This is not about me at all. This is about the team,” Lt. Bassel Ibrahim of the Orlando Fire Department said.
Ibrahim reminds us there’s no “I” in the word “team.”
He says he was part of a crew of four that showed up to a car wreck Monday night, where a car had flipped on its roof after striking a tree on Narcoossee Road near Northlake Parkway in Lake Nona.
The driver got out, but a woman, who was a passenger, was trapped.
“She was located on the roof backward, stuck between the back headrest and the roof, so the car was pretty damaged,” Ibrahim said.
There was a massive impact with the tree and scorched ground all around it.
Video: Orlando firefighter gives up oxygen mask to rescue woman from crashed car (WESH Orlando)
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The lieutenant had just seconds to act with smoke filling up the car and gasoline leaking and burning.
That’s when Ibrahim, engineer Scott Hammond, and firefighters Daniel Crawford and Korey Steinert stabilized the car, ripped out the back window, and Ibrahim crawled inside to give the woman his oxygen mask and tank at his own risk.
“I don’t think she had much time. Honestly, less than a minute for sure. Nobody can really breathe that much smoke for a long period of time, so I was really glad we were where we were at the time that we were,” Ibrahim said.
“Getting her our air pack bought us time,” Ibrahim said.
It gave them time to get her safely out of the car so others could use foam to put out the gasoline-fueled fire.
Ibrahim has certainly proven his life-saving worth, being honored by OFD in 2017 as its firefighter of the year.
However, he says to please don’t call him a “hero.”
“It’s about doing our jobs and the outcome is good. I don’t know about that hero part,” Ibrahim said.
Neither the driver of the car nor the woman who was rescued by that fire team have been identified.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
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