An auto repair worker is fighting for his life after the vehicle he was working on caught fire in the Dartmouth area.
Emergency crews responded to the auto repair shop in the 800 block of Highway 7 in Westphal shortly after 12 p.m. Friday.
The business owner says the employee was trying to remove a gas tank with a blow torch when the minivan ignited.
“I didn’t even know what he was doing. I was inside on the Internet and all I see is the car on fire and he was right next to the car. He was full of gas from top to bottom,” says business owner Eli Hoyeck.
“His clothes were on fire. He was talking and he was screaming.”
Hoyeck says he ran to the man and pulled him away from the vehicle. He then ripped the man’s burning clothes off of his body, burning his own hand in the process.
“Thank God I picked him up and set him over there or he wouldn’t be here with us,” he says.
The minivan was fully engulfed in flames when emergency crews arrived on the scene but the man had already been pulled away from the burning vehicle.
Paramedics rushed the man to hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Hoyeck sustained burns to his left hand.
The RCMP and Nova Scotia Department of Labour and Advanced Education are investigating the incident.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jayson Baxter
