Good Samaritans risked their own lives to save a pair of men Monday who were found unresponsive in a pickup blocking traffic on Interstate 5 in South Bay.
Salvador Castro, who is a public information officer with the California Highway Patrol, said 911 operators got a call shortly before 8 a.m. about traffic stopped because of a white Chevy Silverado truck that had come to a halt in the No. 3 lane.
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Castro said the men had overdosed and were being helped by passers-by. Incredibly, nobody was harmed by the truck, which had a bedful of wheelbarrows loaded into it, just stopped on the freeway.
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National City fire chief Sergio Mora told NBC 7 that the men were unconscious and not breathing when firefighters arrived, though they did both have a pulse. First responders performed assisted breathing on the men and administered two Narcan doses to each man.
Narcan is an opioid overdose-reversing drug known also by the name naloxone.
The firefighters were able to revive both men, who were then each loaded into their own ambulance, which then brought them to the hospital for treatment.
Traffic from the incident was backed up for miles.
Sadly, it wasn't the first such call the department had recently: In fact, Mora said there were four or five Narcan-treated overdoses in National City in just the past 36 hours.
Learn more about the impact of the fentanyl crisis on local communities in NBC 7’s in-depth project "Poison Pill: San Diego's Battle With the Fentanyl Crisis." Watch here.
