Two CT hospital staffers jumped in to rescue crash victims. Then a car exploded.

The commute to work at Backus Hospital was hardly routine for two staff members recently, both of whom stopped to rescue people in a major car crash on Route 2.

And another Backus employee saw it all as she drove past.

It was about 7:45 a.m. on June 21. Dr. Alexander Miano and Amy Jodoin were about to get off the highway in Norwich to head for Backus nearby. But there was an SUV and a VW Jetta off to the side, and the people inside looked hurt.

Miano, a psychiatrist who oversees the Backus outpatient behavioral health clinic, used his tie as a tourniquet on a passenger in the SUV. Jodoin, a respiratory therapist for Hartford HealthCare, had to pull the driver of the Jetta out of her car twice. She also helped retrieve a dog from the SUV.

But neither considers themselves particularly heroic.

“Honestly, if we think of these as acts of bravery, then we’re losing out, because this is not an act of bravery,” Miano said. “We’re brought to do things when we’re called to do things and this was one of those moments that you just don’t have time to think about whether it’s the right thing to do. It’s a human thing to do.”

Jodoin said she agrees with Miano.

“I’m a respiratory therapist. I’m part of an interdisciplinary team,” she said. “I’m not part of the first responders that continually do this: firefighters, police, EMS. … I’m always the one to kind of help with the Band-Aid after they get to the hospital to try and preserve and rehabilitate the patient, to stabilize the patient. So I don’t find it as being bravery.”

Jodoin said what happened that day was an example of teamwork: the firefighters, police, ambulance crews, a man who yelled at her to get away from the burning car. “We were all working as a team and we didn’t even know it at the time,” she said. 

As it turned out, everyone made it out of the crash safely, but because of privacy rules, neither Miano nor Jodoin knows the names of those they saved.

“I was told our leadership (said), without getting into the nitty gritty of everything, wants you to know that you did a wonderful job, that this was the best potential outcome we could have had, and that everyone was safe. So that’s the extent of what I was told,” Jodoin said.

“I stopped in the emergency room to see them both,” Miano said. “Very sweet, when the elderly gentleman wanted to give me my tie back. And I told him that this is probably the best use of my tie that it’s ever had. So I gave it to him as a memento.”

He said the man also kept asking if Miano could find his sneaker, which he had lost in the crash.

While he said the incident was a blur, Miano said that when he arrived at the scene, “the SUV had slammed into the median, so it was difficult to go on the other side, on the driver’s side.”

But the elderly man was in the passenger seat — on his way to surgery at Backus — and his leg was bleeding. Miano called 911 as well as using his tie as a tourniquet.

Jodoin said the crash occurred ahead of her. “It was almost like parting of the seas here, because the SUV and the black Volkswagen collided and I saw it happen and the SUV jumped to the side and was actually perpendicular on the road,” she said. “And then the black car, the black Volkswagen, slammed into the rear quarter.”

They later found out there was a third car ahead, which may have caused the crash. Jodoin continued, “I then had a choice. The other cars in front of me were inching around to go around them. And I said, ‘Oh no, no, no.’ So I went to the left and I drove right up to the accident and hopped out of my car.” 

Jodoin pulled the driver from the burning Jetta, then went and pulled the SUV’s airbag aside so a dog could be freed.

“There was a young girl who was very shaken up in that car,” Jodoin said. “She was in shock. She kept repeatedly asking me, Are you OK? Are you OK? Are you OK? So I said, we’ve got to get you out, your car’s on fire. We’ve got to get you out. So she dove into her passenger seat and was digging around for her belongings, her work bag or water bottles.”

Jodoin pulled the woman out and then went to the SUV, where she helped free the dog. But she saw the Jetta driver had gotten back into her car, which now was in flames. 

“So I pulled her out for the second time, grabbed her by her shoulders and I walked her to my car and I put her in my back seat,” Jodoin said.

“And as I was walking her back, I heard a whistle from the other side of the highway and it was a Manafort worker,” she said. “I remember his big yellow shirt, and he said, ‘Hey, you’ve got to back up; it’s going to blow.’ So I hopped in my car; I put it in reverse. I reversed back probably 100 feet or so, popped out so that I could care for her. She was shaking so bad. … And as I got out, the car exploded.” 

Sarah Connell, clinical director of the outpatient behavioral health clinic, was following along close behind on her way to work.

“I was almost at work, and I came up on this accident and the traffic was going really, really slow but I was trickling through,” she said.

“And when I glanced over, that’s when I saw that it was Dr. Miano … and I saw him kind of bent over, tying his tie around the man’s leg as a tourniquet,” she said. “I kept going. I didn’t want to stop. It seemed like it was about to get a lot worse with the fire. … I became just overwhelmed with pride and I was so proud of him.” 

Connell doesn’t know Jodoin but later realized she was one of the people at the scene. 

She credited Miano with being willing to jump in to a dangerous scene.

“He easily could have kept driving and hope someone else did it, but he stepped up and did and who knows whether that tourniquet actually saved this man’s life or something, but he definitely had the training, the background, the courage, the experience, and those folks were in good hands with him whether they knew it or not,” she said.

Connell said she was surprised to see people helping at the accident scene. “But the folks that were out there helping are I think all in the health care field,” she said. “So I think that comes naturally to some of us is to kind of jump in and help where we’re needed.”

She said Miano’s willingness to help “speaks even more to his compassion for others.”

Miano said he hopes people will realize they can do more than perhaps they realize. “If there’s anything that comes out of the story I hope that empowers the normal person to do some of these things, because they really are called upon to do it,” Miano said. “Do it. Be safe, but do it.”

Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.