by JOHN ANNESE
A minute later, and the headlines would have been different. Firefighter Donald Casey was off-duty and on his way to a doctor's appointment on Sept. 13 when he and another motorist pulled an injured trucker from a burning rig on the Gowanus Expressway -- just before it exploded. The effort saved the trucker's life, and earned the Oakwood resident the title of Advance Firefighter of the Month. Casey still can't believe how the scene unfolded. "We'd been to a lot of car fires, and I thought they (trucks) were not built to explode," he said. The 14-year FDNY veteran praised Jon Kalleberg, a computer technician from Annadale, who helped get the trucker -- Franklin Montes, 59, of Elizabeth, N.J., a heavyset man who suffered a broken leg in the crash -- out of the overturned rig. "If it wasn't for Mr. Kalleberg being there, I wouldn't have been able to pull the guy out," he said. "A lot of credit goes to him." The two men pulled Montes through the truck's windshield, then hoisted him over a guardrail and moved him behind a concrete pillar. Seconds later, the truck's fuel tanks erupted into flames. Kalleberg wasn't injured and Casey, who had recently undergone shoulder surgery, suffered "negative first-degree burns... more like a sunburn than a real burn," the firefighter said. Casey, 45, attached to Ladder Co. 9 in Manhattan, accepted the award as his wife, Kristi, and their 18-month-old twins, Daniel and Patrick, looked on. "Donnie's got a bad shoulder. He didn't care about that. He saw a person in trouble, he reacted and got the job done," said Chief Michael Feminella of the 21st Battalion in Rosebank.
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