PORT ANGELES – Philip White heard the grinding metal crash of the head-on collision, but he didn’t hear the yelling when he shattered the back window of a flaming Ford Explorer with a rock, crawled inside and handed a baby and a toddler out to safety.
Two days and two sleepless nights after the crash, the Port Orchard man finally heard the people yelling at him, screaming, pleading:
Get away, get away, it’s going to blow!
In a small ceremony Friday at the State Patrol’s Port Angeles Detachment office, ordinary people were recognized for extraordinary acts.
The ceremony was held less than two miles from the still-scorched pavement where three people died July 3 in a two-vehicle crash in front of Dupuis Restaurant at 256861 U.S. Highway 101.
Robert J. Norman, 39, of Port Angeles, Abani Biswas, 43, and his daughter, Ankita, 7, of Beaverton, Ore., died.
Five people survived, some because of rescuers who ran to the crash to help.
“Without their effort, the enormity of the tragedy would have been much greater,” said Lt. Clint Casebolt on Friday.
