Medals honour truck-blaze hero and rescuer who died

A dazed occupant is dragged from a blazing vehicle seconds before a huge explosion - it sounds like a scene from a Hollywood movie.

But it was all too real for Craig Goddard when he pulled an unconscious driver from the cab of a truck at Benneydale in the King Country in July last year.

The Te Kuiti helicopter pilot, whose bravery earned him a Royal Humane Society silver medal, said that when the truck exploded it was straight out of a Terminator movie.

Rosemary Hosie, who died in a drowning tragedy that also claimed the lives of a child and a teenager at Browns Bay in January last year, was awarded a posthumous silver medal. Her husband, Bryson, and Mr Goddard received the medals yesterday from Governor-General Dame Silvia Cartwright in a ceremony at Government House in Epsom.

Mr Goddard said that soon after he had pulled the man to safety from the truck, "the tyres caught fire, there was banging and everything just took off".

With him yesterday were his wife, two daughters and mother. The ceremony spurred different emotions for Mr Hosie, who was joined by one of his three daughters and his wife's three sisters.

Mr Hosie said the award was an honour for his wife, whom he described as a very private person who would have been proud if she had been alive.

"My emotions have gone up and down periodically over the past 18 months or so ... It [the honour] brings it back up again to the surface but I am stronger now than I used to be."

Rosemary Hosie was 59 when she went to the rescue of twins Tabitha and Joshua Robinson, 7, and their sister Christle, 16.

Joshua died at the beach and Christle and Mrs Hosie died in hospital days later.