Motorcycle-riding execs become highway heroes

A group of music-industry executives helped yank 10 people from their cars just before fire raced through the scene of a multi-vehicle crash on I-24 in southern Illinois. A semi-truck had plowed full speed into cars that had stopped for construction on the highway near its junction with Interstate 57, causing a chain-reaction eight-car pileup shortly after noon CT Friday.

A 10-person crew riding bikes from Nashville to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota. The Oswald brothers, who were paramedics for 10 years in San Diego, got in touch with 911 operators and immediately began organizing bystanders.

But the amateur rescuers went quickly vehicle by vehicle pulling victims to safety. First, a family of six with children ages 6 to 11; then, a couple of guys in a pick-up truck, one with a bad head wound; finally, a woman, screaming, stuck in a car that looked like a crushed beer can.

The Nashvillians couldn’t get her out of the car, so they got about 10 guys together and dragged the entire car, 3 feet at a time, across the highway into a grass median away from the fire. And they did so just before flames ripped through three vehicles that already had been emptied of passengers. Emergency vehicles arrived about 10 minutes after the crash