So brave ... ‘but don’t do it again’
If the call had come two minutes later, Chris Muller would not have heard it, and a woman would have died.
It was 11pm and Muller, a volunteer firefighter, was off-duty and recovering from recent surgery. On any other night, he would have been asleep, but he heard the call and, when he saw the address was across the road, he and father David decided to take a look.
They arrived to find a building ablaze and neighbours assuring each other the owner had made it out. ‘‘I said, ‘Well, where is she?’ I was just about to turn and go when I heard a voice from the back of the house,’’ Muller said yesterday about the September 2014 incident.
He began crawling through the house until he found the woman at the end of the hall, a dark shape discernible only by the orange glow of her burning kitchen.
‘‘I was just dragging her, so I probably bumped her head on the doorstep, I feel a bit bad for that,’’ Muller said.
Meanwhile, David Muller had left to direct the fire engines. He returned to find his soot-covered son holding a semi-conscious woman on the flat’s front porch.
He was there at Government House, in Wellington, yesterday to see his son receive a Royal Humane Society of New Zealand silver medal for bravery.
‘‘I said, ‘Well done – but don’t ever do it again’,’’ David said.
A Stanhope gold medal, the first awarded to a Kiwi since 1968, was also presented at the ceremony.
Murray Michie, of Bulls, received the award for rescuing Susan Evans and her three daughters after a crash in Manawatu.
The Evans family were at the ceremony, as Michie’s actions in mid-2015 were recounted.
A Mitsubishi Diamante, doing 150kmh and travelling on the wrong side of the road, struck the Evans’ vehicle, causing it and the horse float it was towing to jackknife and flip.
Evans has no memory of the incident, but 17-year-old daughter Gabrielle remembers it vividly.
‘‘I remember this crash, a crunch, and then [seeing] a fence post in the car. Then I could hear screaming, and I was trying to get my seatbelt undone,’’ she said.
‘‘I looked over and Mum was wedged under the seat ... I realised there were flames coming through where the steering wheel was. ‘‘
She was the first out of the vehicle, escaping after Michie smashed the back window.
‘‘I just saw this big figure by the boot door ... and then him pulling me out. Then he was in there getting Hannah out, and Hayley. There was smoke everywhere.’’
‘‘We kept screaming that Mum was still in the car.’’
Michie had to cut Evans’ seatbelt but got her out seconds before the car exploded.
Evans said words could not express the gratitude she felt to all those who rescued her family.