Kirby Police officer Alfred Gonzalez, left, and DPS trooper Brett Wheelis were recognized Monday for their efforts to save two men from a fiery pick-up accident in December 2006. Photo by Tim Wilson

“566 Adam! 566 Adam!” Alfred “Bear” Gonzalez remembers blaring into his patrol radio — knowing full well his passioned pleas for help were falling on deaf ears.

“Get fire here! Get fire here!” he was telling Kirby dispatch as he watched flames begin to lap at, and then fully engulf, the crashed pickup’s cab – with a passenger still inside.

Having already pulled the driver free of the truck — which had crashed early the morning of Dec. 31, 2006, along a busy stretch of Interstate 10 and landed on its side, passenger door pointed skyward — a second man was trapped inside; Gonzales had already struggled to free the man, but he was stuck, lodged on something, unable to crawl or climb free.

Then the flames began.

“He pulled his head back inside the cab, I lost sight of him,” Gonzalez recalls. “Then his head popped out the windshield, which I’d ripped open in order to get the first guy out.”

“He was caught on something, I couldn’t get him out at that time,” he said. “I couldn’t see inside to see what he was stuck on.”

Eventually the fire made it to the cabin. The intense heat and the scorching flames began to take their toll.

“It was him getting that heat that I remember … it was just ‘the yell,’ it was horrible,” he recalls, squinting as he talks, as if he can still feel the flames of the early morning Dec. 31, 2006 incident.

Frustrated, Gonzalez raced back to his squad car and began yelling the highway exit – 566A – into the radio, pleading for help. He knew no one in the vicinity could hear him, or pick up the frequency he was using with his Kirby police-issue radio.

“Exit 566-A, I’ll never forget that,” he says. On his way home from a side job that ended at 2:45 a.m., he drove across the accident scene near the West Avenue and Fresno Street exit.

The pickup’s driver, drunk and driving erratically, lost control of his truck, sending it pinballing between roadside concrete construction barriers before flipping onto it side.

His police training fresh in his mind, just 10 months into the job, Gonzalez freed one man from the wrecked truck, able to drag him clear.

He brought the individual to the curb clear of the wreckage before he learned another man was still inside. “I started walking back and saw his head pop out, he was caught on something.”

About this time, Department of Public Safety Trooper Brett Wheelis made the scene and began helping Gonzalez with the trapped man. Also about that time, the two could hear explosions – tiny but succinct pops – coming from inside the gas tank.

“That’s what I feared, that it would explode. The fire was there, in the cab, and I was afraid something was going to explode.”

Instead, the two struggled on, attempting to free the man.

The man’s clothing had burned off. “Finally. we got him out and away from the flames … we helped him out and started to roll him. There were just open burn-wounds everywhere. We grabbed his hands, there were bodily fluids everywhere, his body was already trying to heal the burns. He was so badly burned.”

Air Life arrived and, after stabilizing the victim, flew him to Brooke Army Medical Center.

The injured man received third-degree burns over 80 percent of his body. While watching a news broadcast later in the week, Gonzalez found out that the man did not survive, dying three days after the accident.

“All your training and all your tools, everything on your utility belt — there’s nothing to turn off the fire.”

As a result of their bravery in the line of duty, both men were presented with awards from the DPS. At a ceremony on Monday, Wheelis was presented with a Director’s Citation while Gonzalez received the Director’s Award, the DPS’ highest honor to non-DPS employees.

Gonzalez will be recognized by the Kirby City Council at 7 p.m. today during its regular city council meeting at 111 Bauman. The public is invited to attend.