The Strib reports – belatedly – the story of Matthew Miller.<\/p>\n
Miller was one of the heretofore unsung citizen-rescuers who saved so many when the 35W bridge collapsed. As fast as the police and fire departments responded, the people on the scene were faster – and Miller was right there:<\/p>\n
\nMiller turned — and saw nothing, except dust and smoke.<\/p>\n
“After about a minute, I realized there was no more bridge. So then I went from chaos mode to panic.”<\/p>\n
Miller worked his way down into the river gorge, across train tracks and woods, to where a huge canopy of highway was resting at a sharp angle.<\/p>\n
He jumped down an 8-foot embankment, grabbing a tree branch to break his fall.<\/p>\n
“There were screams, blood, everything was down there. … I didn’t even know where the heck I was running. I just kept on running.”<\/p>\n
Then he got to the place he calls Ground Zero. “There was eight lanes of concrete hanging 15 feet above me.”<\/p>\n
In an instant, he found himself praying. “I said, ‘God, help me not to focus on that piece of concrete, that piece of highway hanging above my head.’ From there, I didn’t look up.”<\/p>\n
Miller started getting people out of cars that had come crashing down with the bridge. “Everybody that I helped was alive, though more than one with their eyes rolling into the backs of their heads,” he said.<\/p>\n
Among the first people Miller found was a woman trapped in a car upside down. He crawled into the car and ripped out the head rests so she could be pulled out through the back seat.<\/p>\n
Strangely, she was calm. “She was very uncomfortable, I could tell,” Miller said. “But she was more calm than I was.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And now, seven months later?<\/p>\n
\nMiller’s feat, although acknowledged by Minneapolis police, came to public light only last week, when the Congressional Medal of Honor Society announced that he is a finalist for its first Above & Beyond Citizen Honors for unsung heroes.<\/p>\n
The award, to be presented by retired Gen. Colin Powell on March 25, would be the first national recognition for any rescuer in the Aug. 1 bridge collapse, which took the lives of 13 people. Among those who died: Miller’s co-worker Greg Jolstad, who had been joking with him hours before.<\/p>\n
“I’m not really a big hero. I don’t need to have that label,” said Miller, a senior at Bethel University in Arden Hills.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Fair enough. But kudos, and thanks, anyway.<\/p>\n
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