CLARKSBURG (CBS13) — A big rig driver jumped into action to save a man’s life after a head-on collision left a pickup truck driver in a dire situation.

Narinder Singh was driving his big rig on Jefferson Boulevard and Clarksburg Road at about 9 a.m. when the California Highway Patrol says a driver in a pickup truck crossed the center divide and slammed into the big rig, spinning out and landing in a drainage ditch full of water.

“I came off and I saw him in the water,” he said. “Head in the water, then I hold up almost 20 minutes.”

For 20 minutes, he sat with the driver, who was pinned inside his mangled pickup truck, keeping his head out of the water and trying to keep the man alive while emergency crews raced to the scene.

Rescue crews arrived and took over, pulling the pickup truck out of the water. It took first responders an hour and a half to get the man out of the wreckage.

The driver was airlifted to a local hospital, injured, but alive. First responders say it was all because of Singh.