Pride of Britain Awards 2018: full story of the firefighters who saved man impaled by 10-foot bar | Radio Times

Of all the ways Phil Ewins imagined his wedding proposal night, this wasn't one of them. He wasn’t down on one knee in the restaurant where he had enjoyed his first date with his hopefully-soon-to-be-fiancé Dikla. He wasn’t celebrating the surprise at the end of an elaborately-planned treasure hunt for her. Instead, 31-year-old Phil was pinned to a seat in his mangled car, oozing blood over the 10-foot railing that had pierced his back and chest.

“I just remember being on a back road, hitting a curb and the car coming to a stop,” recalls Phil about the accident on a night last October. “My first thought was that I was gutted and what I was going to do about this proposal… Then I looked down and realised this was bad. I’d really messed up.”

Phil was rooted to the spot by the pole that had impaled him, his phone just out of reach. He was alone, his car tangled in a metal fence and his wound becoming more life-threatening with each passing moment.

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“I thought it was fatal,” he says. “I saw the blood coming out really quickly, could feel my lungs deflate. I thought in my heart that I only had seconds to live. I kept thinking that's how I was going to die.”

However, he hung on. And before long another car arrived on the scene, its shocked driver wrenching open Phil’s door before calling the emergency services. But to Phil this stroke of luck seemed to have come too late.

“I thought the damage was too much,” he says. “It’s then I started to lose my composure and started banging on the roof and the steering wheel. I just was screaming.

“I was so annoyed at myself for crashing and I thought about all the sacrifices my family had made to raise me and how I’d thrown that away. I thought about Dikla… It felt like an eternity sitting there.”

But an eternity it wasn’t. Although time had ground to a halt for Phil, it only took three minutes for the emergency services to arrive, a team of 15 firefighters soon working on salvaging him from the wreckage.

“I remember one of them jumped in the back behind me,” recalls Phil. “He said, ‘We're going to get you out of here, don't worry’ before asking if I could keep my head still as they were worried about having a head injury. I was trying to be a good patient, saying I understood by nodding my head – I don’t think I helped myself too much there.”

For the next hour Phil was trapped by the bar, unable to speak as he fought to pump air into his punctured chest. But although his main focus was simply breathing, Phil became aware of an extensive rescue operation unfolding, the firefighters calmly navigating their way through a series of life-or-death decisions.

“Throughout I felt like they had a plan and they were confident of what they were going to do: get me out,” he says. “There was a lot of communication going on. It was a very deliberate thought-out process.”

Phil remembers the roof being hoisted off his car and the firefighters discussing the best way to slice the railing lodged inside him, deciding against – to Phil’s great relief – using cutters that would twist the trapped bar further.

Then the moment came. “They roughly explained to me how they were going to cut it and gave me some medicine. And that was it. I don’t remember anything else.”

Phil recalls nothing from his four days in an induced coma after his surgery, an operation that needed to cut through his abdominal wall to dislodge the bar. Neither can he remember girlfriend Dikla and his family standing over his hospital bed as he opened his eyes again.

In fact, the week after waking was a blur of hallucinations, Phil dreaming he was now on the run after being transported to another hospital in a barrel – “it was a bit weird!” he laughs.

But the nightmares – real and imagined – weren’t important now. All that mattered was Phil had survived. And better still, he was recovering at a phenomenal rate, able to return home in just three weeks. “I was very lucky,” he admits.

Yet Phil wasn’t alive through fortune alone. After being discharged, he knew he had only made it through that night because of the emergency services. And so he made it his mission to thank the firefighters that had saved his life.

After many calls and questions, he finally tracked down the crew that had freed him from the wreckage, meeting them at Highgate fire station less than two weeks after leaving hospital. “I turned up with a card and Roses chocolates – the largest tub I could find!” Phil says.

“One of the first things they said to me was that it's so rare to see the aftermath of an incident if there's a serious injury. They'll help them out, but as soon as the ambulance doors close that's it. They just don't know if a person survives or not.”

His appetite hadn’t recovered, but Phil stayed for lunch in the firehouse, chatting with the team and striking up friendships with the likes of Crew Commander Joe Poynton, one of the men in charge of the recuse.

However, Phil wanted to do more than share a cuppa with them. As he puts it: “A thank you card and a tub of roses didn't seem quite enough to say thank you for saving my life.”

Fortunately, Phil would find another way to repay the team after taking care of the unfinished business from his crash night: his marriage proposal.

Unfortunately, Dikla had learned about the treasure hunt plan from Phil’s father while his son lay in intensive care, but Phil still created an unforgettable, albeit smaller, moment for her.

Two weeks after leaving hospital, Phil welcomed Dikla home to an apartment filled with lit candles, finally getting down on one knee to ask the big question.

She said yes. The wedding, at long last, was on.

As soon as they started planning, Phil had some very special guests in mind: the Highgate firefighters. And the crew were only too happy to accept the invitation.

“The team were lovely and very unassuming,” remembers Phil about the couple’s big day in July this year.

“They didn't want to overshadow anything,” he says, recalling how the crew looked bashful as he thanked them all in a special speech during the evening’s celebrations. “But it was really nice to make a bit of a fuss over them. They do save lives and they are heroes.”

Phil also remembers the “fantastic sense of humour” they brought to the day, recalling in particular one conversation with the crew: “At one point they said ‘We didn't actually know your full name immediately after the crash. We only knew that you were called Phil and that you were impaled. From that you became a bit of a celebrity in the service and we just called you Phil My Hole In.’ I just cracked up!”

Crew Commander Joe Poynton was relieved that Phil had taken the joke so well, then revealing that the firefighter’s wedding card was packed with similar puns, ranging from “Watch yourself on the bar, Phil!” to “Glad we didn't have to crash your wedding!”.

“I think he was a bit worried at first, but I thought it was hilarious!” Phil says.

The friendships continued on after the big day, with Phil still speaking regularly to the Highgate crew, and recently having enjoyed a pint with the team after his final all-clear check-up.

However, the firefighters will always be more than just mates to Phil – he says they’re lifesavers, ones that are “definitely underappreciated”.

Fortunately, Phil now has a chance to show his gratitude. The Highgate firefighters are receiving a Pride of Britain’s emergency services award, a surprise that was revealed to them live on ITV’s This Morning.

Representatives of the 15 firefighters who responded to the incident will attend the awards ceremony itself, their life-saving actions acknowledged on national TV for all to see.

“I’m so happy they’re going to get some recognition for what they did for me,” Phil says, pausing before adding: “Because if anybody deserves the definition of a hero, it’s these guys.”

The Pride of Britain Awards are on Tuesday 6th November at 8pm on ITV