An Australian man has been rescued by his fellow travellers who pulled – or should be pushed? – together to lift a train carriage off his leg.
During Wednesday’s morning rush hour a WA man slipped at the entrance to a train, trapping his leg between the carriage and the platform.
Commuters and railway staff all pitched in to save the man whose leg was being crushed by the 90 tonne carriage at Stirling station just outside Perth.
Watch the CCTV video of the man being saved by train commuters in Australia
Speaking to ABC, spokesman for Transperth David Hynes said, “He stood in the doorway and as he was sort of taking up his position there, one leg slipped outside the door, slipped outside the gap, and he was stuck.
“We alerted the driver, made sure the train didn’t move. Then our staff who were there at the time got the passengers, and there were lots of them, off the train, and organised them to sort of rock, tilt the train backwards away from the platform so they were able to get him out and rescue him.
“Everyone sort of pitched in. It was people power that saved someone from possibly quite serious injury,” said Hynes.
A passenger on the scene Nicolas Taylor told Perth Now that he and the other passengers evacuated the carriage to relieve some of the weight and then they all pitched in to help rock the train so that the man’s leg could be freed.
“He seemed to be a bit sheepish, because right where he fell was the ‘mind the gap’ writing,” said Taylor adding that the Trasperth staff reacted well to the incident and managed to free the man within 10 minutes of getting stuck.”
“They did a really good job, they took control and handled it well. When I first saw it I thought we’d be there for hours.”
In a statement, Transperth praised the passengers and staff for their help adding that the situation was not as a result of overcrowding and that although they had called for an ambulance, the man had fortunately suffered no severe injuries.