NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Perhaps it was fate that a man’s pickup truck became trapped in the rising floodwaters that Hurricane Francine not far from Miles Crawford’s home.

The 39-year-old emergency room nurse is professionally trained to save lives — fast — and that’s exactly what he did when he saw what happened in his New Orleans neighborhood Wednesday night.

Crawford grabbed a hammer from his house and ran to the underpass where the truck was stuck. He waded through waist-deep water to reach the driver. When he got there, he saw that the man was already up to his head in water. There was no time to lose.

He ordered the driver to get into the back of the truck, as the front of the pickup was deeper in the water. He grabbed the hammer, smashed the rear window and pulled the man out, grabbing him just as he was about to fall into the rushing water.

“It was kind of instinctive,” Crawford told the Associated Press. “It wasn’t hard to break the window and pull the guy out.”

About 10 minutes later, the pickup was completely submerged.

Crawford, a nurse in the emergency room at University Medical Center, said he got out of the water as soon as the man was safe and never learned his name. Crawford cut his hand during the rescue – a television station that filmed it showed him with a large bandage – but that was no big deal for someone used to trauma.

“I guess it’s just second nature when you’re a nurse, you just go in and get it done, right?” Crawford said. “I just had to get him out of there.” ___

Associated Press writers Jeff Martin in Atlanta and Lisa J. Adams Wagner in Evans, Georgia, contributed to this report.