Students at a San Francisco English language school are mourning the deaths this weekend of five classmates and a nonstudent who died in a fiery crash in northern Santa Barbara County. A sixth student who survived appears to owe her life to a retired firefighter, who was driving nearby when the accident happened and managed to pull the student from the wreckage.

Five of the victims and the survivor of the Thursday crash, all between the ages of 18 and 25, were students at Embassy Center for English Studies in San Francisco. A 30-year-old man who was not a student at the school also was killed. The driver and survivor, 19-year-old Jeanne Ostrowski, had come to the school from France.

"It’s been very traumatic. We are helping our students here as best we can," John Lograsso, the school’s director of studies, said Friday.

The crash occurred at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, just south of Los Alamos on Highway 101. A Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department official declined to release the names of the other victims Saturday pending notification of next of kin, whose relatives are overseas. Three of the victims were from France, one was from Turkey, and one was from Russia.

California Highway Patrol officials said the driver was headed south when she drifted into a dirt median, overcorrected, then crossed several lanes before slamming into a cottonwood tree. Morro Bay resident John Duthie, a retired Kings County firefighter, was towing his boat to San Diego and witnessed the wreck from his truck.

In an interview with the Santa Maria Times, Duthie said he pulled over moments after the crash occurred. "I stopped, and literally, the dust was still up in the air," Duthie told the Times. He pulled the driver out of the badly mangled car, which was quickly engulfed in flames, leaving no time to save anyone else. Two victims were thrown from the vehicle, and two died in the fire.

"The miracle was I was there for one person, and that person got out," Duthie told the Times. Ostrowski was listed in serious condition Friday afternoon. More than 130 students are enrolled at the San Francisco school, which is headquartered on Nob Hill.

source: www.sfgate.com