At least four men were being called heroes last night after they jumped into the Ala Wai Canal and pulled an unconscious driver from his overturned and submerged pickup truck, officials said.

"You don't think. You just do it because that could be you down there instead," said Jim Crites, one of the men who freed the driver from the truck, then performed CPR on him in the water before city rescue personnel arrived. The driver was in critical condition last night at The Queen's Medical Center.

"It was like something out of a movie," said witness Mike Hicks, whose car was struck by the truck seconds before it hit a berm and flew into the canal's murky water.

Within seconds, several witnesses jumped into the water to aid the man trapped in the vehicle's cab, which rapidly filled with water, said Fire Department Capt. Earl Kealoha.

"Definitely heroes," he said.

Hicks said the drama began about 10:30 a.m. when he and his daughter Christina, 6, were stopped at a red light in their car at the corner of Ala Wai and Paoakalani Avenue. The pickup truck, apparently out of control, bore down on them from behind on Ala Wai, smashed between two lanes of parked cars, veered to the right, where it ran up the side of the berm on two wheels, flew over the sidewalk and landed upside down in the water.

"Before I could check on my daughter and get out of the car, people were already diving into the water," Hicks said.

Kealoha said at least one other driver whose car was hit by the pickup truck and one man walking on the sidewalk jumped into the water immediately. Others followed later, Kealoha said.

'CLOCK IS TICKING'

Crites, a retired doorman at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki, said he was stopped in his Volkswagen when the pickup truck "barreled" through the intersection without any attempt to brake. "Ten seconds later, I'm out of the car and diving into the water," he said.

Reaching into the upside-down pickup truck from the passenger side, Crites couldn't see or reach the driver, who was strapped in by his seat belt. So Crites and two men flipped the truck over, which by then was filled with water.

"All the time I'm thinking, the clock is ticking on this guy," Crites said. "We had to get him out of there."

Using a taxi driver's pair of scissors passed to him by a young man on a skateboard, Crites and the others felt their way through the dark water to cut the driver free and bring him to the surface, where they performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on top of the pickup truck's cab until rescue personnel arrived.

"He's the hero of the day," Hicks said.

Crites, 54, said he did what came naturally.

"You just do what you are supposed to do. Luckily, I'm not the type that panics," he said.

Emergency Medical Services spokesman Bryan Cheplic said the pickup truck driver was initially transported to Queen's in serious condition but that was later revised to critical.

One of the rescuers also was taken to Queen's in stable condition for treatment of scratches and numerous jellyfish stings suffered during the rescue, Cheplic said. Crites said that he, too, suffered many jellyfish stings and was consulting a nurse by telephone about signs of infection caused by the Ala Wai water.

Witnesses identified two of the other men who went into the water as Reuben Silva and Blake Harrison.

The cause of the accident was under investigation, police said.

The accident occurred at the same intersection where a 63-year-old man died in 2000 after his car also rolled into the canal.

INFLATED CASTLE GOES FLYING INTO OCEAN AT MA'ILI, WITH 2-YEAR-OLD STILL INSIDE

King Kamehameha holiday weekend revelers at Ma'ili Beach Park couldn't believe their eyes at about 10:45 a.m. yesterday.

A large inflatable bounce house with two small children frolicking inside suddenly shot upward "higher than a coconut tree," floated down, bounced once off the sandy beach, went airborne again, and landed in the ocean 50 yards off shore.

One of the two children inside the inflated jumping castle, a 5-year-old boy, fell some 15 feet to the ground while it was airborne, but he was not badly hurt.

Then witnesses watched stunned as the boy's cousin, a 2-year-old girl, dangled from the bouncer's netting as the castle floated into the ocean and began to sink.

Kevin Bellefeuille, 35, said it was a powerful dust devil whirlwind sweeping through the area that had lifted the bounce house off the ground and about 20 feet or more into the air. He said he was a short distance from the bouncer and saw it happen.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Bellefeuille. "The wind just came up. And it picked the thing up and it shot straight up in the air. It spun, and Manuel's son Jonah fell out. And then it went one bounce on the sand, and straight to the ocean."

RUSHING TO RESCUE

Manuel Hatori, 29, said his son, Jonah Hernandez, was shaken from the fall, but OK.

However, he said, his niece, Inez Hatori, 2, went down with the jumper in the water. Within seconds, lifeguards Miguel Baez and Keone Keaulana, along with numerous beachgoers, were racing toward the water.

One man grabbed the lifeguards' emergency surfboard and dove into the sea.

Hatori and others credit the unnamed man — who left after the incident without mentioning his name — with saving the girl's life.

"We were all swimming out to get to the balloon, and this guy got the lifeguard's surfboard and started paddling out and he got there first," said Hatori. "He just reacted.

"And he went in and got my niece, and he said, 'How many were in there?' And I said, 'Only the one.' And he said, 'Oh, I got her, I got her — everything is all right!' And we relayed the message to the people on the shore, 'The baby's all right! The baby's all right!'

"And then he left, the guy. And we didn't get his name. We wanted to say thank you and give him a hug."

AND THEN ...

Baez and Keaulana were assisted by lifeguards Mike Menkewicz and Michael Bunyan in getting the girl to the shore.

"We got her out of the water and were giving her oxygen," said Baez, 33, who said the child was conscious and weeping, and had a minor puncture wound to her forehead. "We did an assessment on her. We treated her as a trauma patient. Basically, we were not taking any chances."

Honolulu Emergency Services personnel arrived and checked out both children. Jonah didn't need hospitalization, it was determined, but Emergency Services transported Inez to The Queen's Medical Center in serious but stable condition.

But no sooner were lifeguards getting that emergency under control, than another began. A cry for help sounded out a short distance down the beach from a 37-year-old man who was showing signs of a heart attack.

"He was having difficulty breathing, chest pains," said Baez.

Lifeguards brought the man to shore and gave him oxygen. After paramedics examined the man, he was transported to Hawaii Medical Center West in serious condition.

Bellefeuille later said the man is a friend who was one of the first to jump into the water to rescue the little girl.

"He was trying to help," said Bellefeuille, who had also dived into the rescue attempt. "But when I was coming back to shore he was yelling, 'Kevin, help!' So I jumped back in and helped get (him) to shore. He said he had a sharp pain to his heart. I'm thinking he's going to be all right. I just came from hospital."

Hatori concluded the same thing about his niece.

"She's all right, I think" he said. "They say everything's OK. They just want to have her stay overnight for observation."

For Baez it was all in a day's work. "These things happen, although I've never seen a flying castle before," he said.

"Basically, this was a freak accident that went bad. However, miraculously, everybody came out OK."

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com and Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.