Brett Naber was heading home to Cedar Bluffs from a job in Lincoln on Wednesday when he saw what looked like a fire in the pitch black night.

When he got closer, he saw a sheriff’s car and a horse lying motionless in the road.

Naber turned on his hazard lights, left his truck in the middle of the road at 119th Street and Waverly Road, grabbed his fire extinguisher and ran to a second car in the ditch.

There, he met Lancaster County Sheriff’s Deputy Amy Willadsen, running on adrenaline as soon as she saw the flames rising from the engine.

“It was one of those where the fire at any second could go into the car,” she said Thursday.

The fire was spreading. A man was trapped behind the wheel.

“We had to get him out,” Naber said Thursday.

Both emptied their extinguishers, but the fire continued. So they went for the door.

It was jammed pretty good, Naber said, but they got it open and pulled the man out. His feet were on fire.

Naber took off his vest and tried to put out the fire. Willadsen ran for a blanket in her cruiser.

Willadsen said everything happened in two or three minutes. Before Naber knew it, Waverly Fire and Rescue workers were there. He stepped back and let them take over. The driver came to and said a few words; Naber’s not sure what.

Naber stayed until the ambulance drove away and they cleared the road.

“I think we were put there for a reason,” he said Thursday.

After all, it wasn’t a road he normally traveled.

When it was all over, he got back in his truck to drive home, almost in a daze, with a lot on his mind.

It could as easily have been him. Or his wife.

When he saw the fire, he said, instinct kicked in.

“I just hope he’s all right,” he said. “I hope we were there in time.”

Stephen Gall, 47, of Garland, was in serious condition at a Lincoln hospital Thursday with burns to his feet. Sheriff Terry Wagner said the injuries don’t appear to be life- threatening.

Willadsen wasn’t dispatched to the scene, but she heard the call on the scanner and went because she was just a couple of miles away in Waverly.

When she got there three minutes later, about 8:30, the car was on fire, she said.

In the county, medical personnel usually reach an accident before the sheriffs do, Willadsen said. But they hadn’t made it to Waverly Road yet, and she had.

She got out and saw the driver inside, unconscious.

The windshield support pillars were bent in and the top of the car crushed from the collision with the horse. She grabbed her fire extinguisher and knocked the fire down.

That’s when Naber ran up.

“Thanks to the quick and good work by Deputy Willadsen and a very conscientious citizen, Brett Naber, Mr. Gall was rescued from that burning vehicle,” Wagner said.

Last October, Willadsen responded to a medical emergency at a home between Sprague and Martell. A 52-year-old woman wasn’t breathing; the deputy did CPR until rescue workers arrived.

Wagner said the woman died at the hospital, but, thanks to Willadsen, her family was able to donate her organs to help others.

Willadsen was given a life-saving award from the county in January.

On Wednesday evening, Wagner said, someone called 911 to report the accident but told dispatchers it was a car-deer collision and that the car was running in the ditch with no one inside.

He said it turned out to be a 6-year-old horse named Dap that had gotten out of Lanel Fenster’s fence and into the road.

Wagner noted that it’s getting to be the time of year for more car-animal crashes — whether deer or cows and horses. Wednesday night there were three, two with deer.

And domesticated animals sometimes get out of their enclosures, he said.

“This is still a rural county. People tend to forget that sometimes, but there’s a lot of livestock out there that can pose some serious hazards to their driving.”

Cory Matteson contributed to this report. Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com.