Joseph Paul Meno helped to rescue Richard L. Carson from burning, Grant Park, Illinois, July 30, 1997. Carson, 61, remained in the driver’s seat of a pickup truck that, in a highway accident, had left the roadway, struck and broke off a wooden utility pole, and caught fire. Approaching the scene in his vehicle, Meno, 50, stone fabricator, saw the burning truck at the base of the pole. He stopped and, despite live high-voltage lines about the truck and pole, approached the driver’s door and attempted to open it. With flames growing on the wreckage, Meno and another man who had arrived bent down the window frame of the driver’s door to enlarge an opening. The men then reached into the truck, grasped Carson, and pulled him out, through the opening. Meno and the other man dragged Carson away from the truck within seconds of a rush of flames that engulfed it. Carson required medical treatment for injury sustained in the accident, and Meno sustained lacerations and minor burns to his hands and arms, from which he recovered.
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