BASKING RIDGE, NJ — Barry Whalen was “just in the right place at the right time,” as he says, when he pulled a trapped and injured woman from a burning car following a crash on I-78 Monday morning.
As a dump-truck driver, Whalen, 54, of Jackson is constantly on the road driving up and down I-78 everyday.
“When you drive as much as I do, you are bound to see crashes and have them,” Whalen said.
But what he saw on Monday was nothing he had seen before or will ever forget.
Renu Rajnarayan, 46, of East Brunswick was driving a Toyota Rav 4 on the westbound side when it went off the highway near Exit 33 in Basking Ridge and overturned, New Jersey State Police Sgt. Lawrence Peele said. (See Related: Car Engulfs In Flames On I-78 In Basking Ridge)
“She went off the road and hit a tree at full speed. I saw flames when the car hit the tree and it rolled about four times. It bounced like a golf ball,” said Jessica Rine, who witnessed the crash.
It is unclear why Rajnarayan’s car veered off the roadway. Rine said it looked as though she never slowed down.
Rine called 911 immediately.
Whalen, who missed seeing the crash by about 30 seconds, said he saw the car in the grass median and immediately pulled over.
“I saw the car roll a couple of times and was panicking,” Whalen said.
He jumped out of his truck and saw smoke spewing out of the car’s hood.
“As I was walking I started seeing flames and began running,” Whalen said. “Other people also pulled over and the fire got bigger. The flames were about three feet high coming out of the sides of the hood and up onto the windshield.”
All of the airbags deployed in the SUV, making it difficult to see if there was anyone inside. Whalen reached his hand in a window and lifted an airbag to see that Rajnarayan was unconscious, slumped over with a giant gash on her forehead and blood flowing down her face.
Blood was everywhere, Whalen recalled.
“The gash was so big. It was about five inches long and the width of the size of a quarter. You could see white, you could see her skull,” Whalen said.
As the fire continued to intensify, Whalen, who was scared and panicking, thought, “I’m not going to sit here and watch this woman burn to death. I don’t know her but you never want to see that. We have to get this woman out!”
Witnesses started panicking, some began throwing water on the car, while Whalen and another man tried yanking the doors open.
Whalen and the other man were lifting and rocking the car to try to get the doors to open. A woman nearby yelled, “the doors must be locked!”
Flames at that point were starting to come out from under the dashboard, Whalen said.
“I was getting nervous,” Whalen said.
The motion of moving the car awoke Rajnarayan. Witnesses saw her wake up and began pointing at her doors and screaming, “Unlock your doors! Unlock your doors!”
Rajnarayan unlocked her door and someone undid her seat belt as Whalen pulled her out and away from the burning car.
The entire rescue took about two minutes. And within a minute after Rajnarayan was pulled free the rest of the vehicle was fully engulfed in flames, Whalen said.
Whalen, who was covered in blood, said Rajnarayan did not know what happened and kept asking “what is going on?” She tried to go back to the car to get her purse and witnesses stopped her.
State Police showed up moments later and did not know the witnesses pulled Rajnarayan out of the car. The trooper on scene told everyone to leave.
Whalen used a bottle of water to wash the blood off his hands and jumped back in his truck and went back to work.
“I’m just glad she is OK, and we were able to get her out. That’s all that matters,” Whalen said. “I wasn’t even thinking about it at the time it happened I just did it. If that was my mom or sister I would hope someone would do that for them.”
Rajnarayan suffered injuries that were not life-threatening, and was taken by Atlantic Ambulance to Morristown Medical Center, Peele said.
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