By EMMA SUN
A MOTORIST who warned a family of four to move away from their crashed car moments before it burst into flames has been hailed a hero with a Group Bravery Citation.
It was just a normal day for Ferny Creek’s Donald Orr on 29 December 2011, when he saw a car containing a family of four plummet down a steep embankment in Sassafras.
Mr Orr said he was driving down a notorious stretch of road on the Mountain Highway towards The Basin that afternoon when he was faced with the family’s car coming in the opposite direction driving over the double white lines.
“This car was about a foot over the double white line, which doesn’t give you much room to get past, but because I was close to a fire track I managed to swerve into that so he missed me,” he said.
“As I came out of it, I didn’t actually stop, but I saw in my rear mirror the back of the car going down the embankment.”
With very few places to stop on the road, Mr Orr drove ahead until he found a place to turn his car around and stopped to help.
The car had hit a large gum tree and left the male driver, his wife and their children with various injuries.
He said by the time he got back, there were already people rushing down to rescue the family.
“These people are the brave ones – they had already started getting the people out of the car,” he said.
“I went down to attempt to help them, but by the time I got back they had already got the two children and the wife out, and literally just got the man out too.”
Without help from the strangers, the family could very well have been another statistic in that year’s road toll.
Mr Orr played down his involvement on the day, but it was his quick thinking that led the group to move the family further away from the car, which burst into flames soon after the rescue.
“A tire had burst, which was quite a big bang, and I could see the whole car going up in flames so I insisted that they try to move the injured people to the other side of the road due to the danger of an explosion,” he said.
“But I just think it’s the sort of thing anybody would do, I can’t see anybody who would drive past an accident and try not to assist.”
Mr Orr was also modest and humble about receiving the citation, which comes as part of the Australian Bravery Awards.
He once again played down his role, crediting the actions of the other people for saving the family that day.
“I am proud, as anybody would be, but I think there were a lot of people who were involved in it who would deserve it too and the others who are receiving this citation did far more than I did,” he said.
“Anybody would be very grateful to receive the recognition but to me, I’m sure anybody would’ve done the same thing.”
