Off-duty firefighter in Connecticut saves injured woman from burning car

An off-duty firefighter heroically saved the life of a woman who was injured in a car accident and ‘would have burned to death’ if not for the man’s actions. 

Nicholas Perri Jr., a firefighter from New York, pulled the woman from her car Saturday over the weekend without the help of protective equipment or a hose line, officials said. 

The incident happened around 3.15am in Brookfield, Connecticut, when Perri was driving home from a shift of his own with the White Plains Fire Department. 

Perri stumbled upon a single-vehicle car wreck and found the woman inside, incapacitated. 

‘Instinct, training kicked in and ran in and did the best I could do to get her out,’ Perri said in an interview after the save. 

This is the woman’s car after the fire department put out the blaze caused by the single vehicle wreck

Nicholas Perri Jr is a firefighter with the White Plains Fire Department. He was driving home from work when he stumbled upon the car

Dashcam footage from the night of the incident shows the moments when the man dragged the woman to safety

The off-duty firefighter pulled the woman from the car as the flames were reaching the passenger side of the vehicle

The man himself came dangerously close to the blaze as he even had an article of clothing burnt, a statement from the Brookfield Volunteer Fire Company said. 

‘The jacket he was wearing was burned from the fire. If not for the courageous actions of Mr. Perri, the operator would have burned to death in her vehicle,’ the statement read. 

Perri did not hesitate to jump into action and save the woman, sustaining minor injuries in the process. 

‘I assessed how she was in there, and then I broke the front passenger window. I was able to get one of her legs free; the other was pretty mangled — it was giving me a hard time,’ the firefighter said. 

According to officials, the man reached the woman just as the flames were reaching the passenger side of the car.  

‘I was just yelling, “You got to work with me because we are running out of time here,”‘ he told the victim. 

Perri said his training as a firefighter kicked in when he saw the single-vehicle crash 

Perri had his own jacket burned during the incident, officials said after the save

The volunteer firefighters arrived at the scene and found the woman’s vehicle engulfed in flames

Dashcam footage from the night of the incident shows Perri dragging the woman to safety as they arrive at the scene. 

As the EMS and firefighters arrived at the scene, the car can be seen engulfed in flames. 

The man’s response is now being heralded as heroic by those both at the scene and in the field. 

‘His actions are a testament to him, the White Plains FD, and the fire service as a whole,’ the Brookfield volunteer organization said.

Officials said that the woman would have burned to death if it weren’t for the actions of Perri

The woman, who was not initially identified, was taken to a hospital in Danbury, Connecticut, after the incident. One report indicated that she is in the ICU. 

No others were injured in the incident. 

‘I was the first firefighter on scene from Brookfield, and there was no way that the victim would have survived had he not done what he’d done,’ BVFC Chief Andrew Ellis said. 

It’s unknown what caused the single-vehicle wreck.