Khalid Jamour was ringing up a customer when he heard a massive boom outside, spurring him into action.

“It was terrifying,” Jamour said. “But someone has to be brave for everyone else.”

Jamour, a manager at Birdie’s Food and Fuel in Hahnville, was on duty at about 6 a.m. Saturday morning when an SUV collided with a gas pump outside the store – a video of the incident showed the collision causing a large white flash, an explosion leading way to a massive fire and the collapse of the canopy above.

With a handful of customers inside the store, Jamour had to react quickly – not just to keep the situation from worsening, but also to calm the store patrons, and more importantly, to keep them safe.

“I shut all the tanks off and told everyone that we’ve got to go outside,” Jamour said. “You need to go across the street and get away from this.”

He called 911 and did what he could to contain the fire. He went outside with an extinguisher, but there wasn’t much that could do as the fire was too large and he could not get close to the source.

“It was like 40 feet,” Jamour said. “What made it so big, someone was pumping gas about a minute before, so there was still fuel in the line.”

A short time later, firefighters arrived and were able to contain and ultimately put out the fire.

According to Birdie’s owner Mike Nabut, police arrested the driver of the SUV, who was subsequently charged with DWI.

“Thank God that nobody was hurt,” Nabut said. “(Jamour) handled the situation great … nobody could have done a better job securing the place and getting people out of the building. We can get another gas pump, another canopy and even another store if it came to that, but you can’t get back a loss of life.”

It is an expensive situation – Nabut estimated the crash caused approximately $75,000 worth of damage, and the store won’t be able to sell gas for at least another eight weeks, the estimated time it will take to replace the gas pumps. The driver was uninsured, Nabut noted, thus the costs fall upon the business.

“$75,000 worth of damage, in a matter of seconds. But like I said, I’ll take damage all day beyond someone getting hurt,” Nabut said. “Even beyond the explosion, they could have run into someone coming out of the store, getting gas. Thankfully, at that time of day, there were not too many people there or even out on River Road.

“Accidents happen. But a drunk driver of all things … it’s salt in the wound.”

When Nabut arrived at the scene, he said he could tell Jamour was “running on emotion.”

“I could almost feel his heart beating … I mean, you see something like what happened, you see that in the movies. We’re not programmed to see that in real life,” Nabut said.

Jamour credited his ability to react in the heat of the moment to the emergency training Nabut provides and requires for store employees.

“You learn the protocols, so when this is what happens, this is what you do,” Jamour said. “It’s a good thing he has us take those classes … I know I’m thankful I took the course. As scary as it was, you have to make sure a big problem doesn’t become a much bigger one, and that this (fire) doesn’t kill anyone.”

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