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Centerville police officers rescue woman from burning car

The Centerville Police Chief is calling the actions by those officers heroic.

Centerville police say two officers saved a woman trapped in a burning car.

It happened Wednesday on Collins Avenue and two Centerville police officers responded to the call.

“When you hear about anybody entrapped in a car, you know it's going to be bad,” Lt. Scott Radebaugh said. “When you add fire to that, it really puts you on a time crunch. You want to get there as fast as possible to try to do whatever you can.”

Lt. Radebaugh and Sgt. Ryan Powell broke the passenger side window with a Halligan tool.

“The front end of the vehicle was definitely on fire,” Powell said. “It looked like it was getting bigger and bigger by the second.”

The two then pulled the woman out of the car to safety.

Radebaugh says 20 seconds after the rescue, the driver’s seat was engulfed in flames.

He's thankful he was in the right place at the right time.

“We were real fortunate to be close enough to where we could get there in time and do what we needed to do to get her out of the car,” Radebaugh said. “It was nothing but a miracle that we were close enough.”

The woman was released from the hospital a few hours after the accident, and is expected to make a full recovery.

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