True Story: No Way Out

Amandeep Kaur threw her husband a pleading glance when the phone rang: Not tonight! They were moving in two days and everything was either in boxes or about to be. The couple’s two-year-old daughter Gurjas was running around with untamed energy, while their newborn son Meharvan was barely two weeks old. They already had their hands full. It was nearly 10pm on Saturday, November 11, 2006.

"I know, I know," Satwinder Singh Bajwa sighed as he pulled on his overalls. "But I have to go." Bajwa, 28, a mobile mechanic, answered as many as 60 of these calls a week at his home near Toronto, Canada. This latest one was about a truck that had brokendown. It was a 45-minute drive away.

Bajwa got into his white Ford van with its big cube at the back – loaded with alternators, batteries and containers of diesel, oil, petrol and propane – and headed for Highway 407, which cuts a six-lane swathe across the top of Toronto. Heading east on the 407, he overtook a blue Volkswagen Jetta, then eased off the accelerator.

Traffic was light, the road was dry and the temperature was above freezing on this winter’s night: with luck, he could be back home in a couple of hours.

Then came a quick movement to his left, and a deer standing in the grassy median leapt into the lane right in front of him. There was no time to brake; the impact sent Bajwa’s van skidding to the right as other cars screeched to avoid him. He slid across three lanes and slammed into a pole on the shoulder of the slow lane.

Inside the van, fuel cans and welding tanks broke free from their moorings. In the driver’s cab, Bajwa’s turban went flying, his right shoe came off and blood streamed from his head. Dazed, he felt a searing pain in his right hip. His vehicle’s bumper bar had been forced into the passenger seat and the engine was now in the cab, trapping him. The interior reeked of diesel and the door was stuck. He tried to squeeze through a 20cm gap between the top of the door and the roof of the twisted cab, but it was too small. Flames flickered around his foot. His cargo could explode at any time.