Five members of the public were given Public Spiritedness Awards by the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) on Friday.

These hearts of gold had stopped to render assistance at an accident scene on Wednesday, where a cabby and his passenger were trapped in a taxi crushed by a tipper truck and mired in wet cement along the Ayer Rajah Expressway.

Three of the awardees were lorry drivers - Mr Lim Thiam Ngor, 56, and Chinese nationals Zhang Yonghui, 39, and Mr Gong Ming Shan, 38. They had been passing by in their vehicles when they were flagged down by SCDF personnel. They said they gladly stopped, and offered the use of the cranes on their lorries to help lift the tipper truck off the taxi.

The other two awardees who voluntarily stopped to help were former SCDF medic Tay Wei Jie, 27, and logistics manager Alex Yeo, 35. Mr Tay assisted paramedics in their duties and helped to calm the trapped passenger in the taxi. Mr Yeo helped the tipper truck driver down from his vehicle, and also used his bare hands to scoop the wet cement out of the taxi. Both of them stayed at the scene until they saw the passenger successfully extricated from the taxi.

Besides these five men, the SCDF is still looking for two other lorry drivers, who had helped to lift the tipper truck off the taxi. The SCDF is also looking for other workers, some of whom had helped to shovel wet cement out of the taxi.