‘I’D LOVE A THANK YOU’
Eight months ago, Athen Barnaby pulled a 60year-old truckie from a burning cabin ... and while the father-of-two still has flashbacks of the fiery rescue he’s yet to hear from the man he saved
THANK you.
It’s a simple phrase, yet it would have meant so much to Gold Coaster Athen Barnaby.
It has been eight months since the 33-year-old pulled a truck driver from his burning vehicle after a horror crash on the Pacific Motorway.
But the pair still have not met, nor spoken.
Mr Barnaby said he was disappointed the truck driver had not reached out to him, despite hearing from his daughter that he had recovered. “I never heard from him,” he said. “I would have been happy to just chat with him about what he was going through.
“It’s up to him, I’m not going to chase him. “I’m just glad that I saved him.” Mr Barnaby, a father of two, said he often had flashbacks of the fiery incident which put Gold Coast traffic in gridlock on February 2.
Mr Barnaby was driving south on the M1 early that afternoon when a truck jackknifed while crossing a bridge near exit 69 at Nerang.
If it wasn’t for the quick thinking of a few men at the scene, the elderly truck driver would most likely be dead.
Mr Barnaby, with only thongs on his feet, climbed on to the burning truck and pulled the stricken 60year-old driver to safety.
The act of bravery was captured on video by Mr Barnaby’s friend who filmed it from the car.
“If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t change anything,” Mr Barnaby said, still wearing the same thongs.
“About 10 seconds after we got him down, the whole truck went up in flames.”
From the car, Mr Barnaby’s daughter Akira, 3, and his wife Catherine, 24, watched the act of heroism.
“Now every time my daughter sees footage with fire she says, ‘Daddy, Daddy’,” Mr Barnaby said.
It’s too early to know if the shocking incident will haunt the young girl in years to come but Mr Barnaby admitted he thought about the crash regularly.
“The bridge is only one minute away from here,” he said.
“Every time we drive out, we drive that way ... so of course, you always remember that time it happened.
“You get flashbacks of the incident.
“You can always see the part where the bridge has been rebuilt and it always reminds me.”
Mr Barnaby said he was able to stay calm at the time thanks to the gruelling pilot training he underwent in his home country, the Philippines, back in 2011.
“We were in the barracks and we were doing military training,” he explained.
“We were up at 5am every day doing drills, running around.
“As we did that, we would get