Gov. Josh Green helped rescue a driver in an overturned vehicle while en route to a ceremony on Hawaii island Thursday morning.

Green was traveling on Waikoloa Road to attend the Waikoloa Solar + Storage ribbon-cutting ceremony when he and his security detail saw an overturned vehicle sometime before 10 a.m.

The driver of a vehicle was traveling on the roadway when he lost control. The vehicle went airborne and flipped several times before it landed upside down in a gulch.

Green, an off-duty firefighter and good Samaritans helped the driver exit the vehicle before paramedics arrived at the scene.

Green, a doctor, and the others kicked out the front window and extricated him out of the vehicle. “We sat him down for about five minutes, made sure he didn’t have any neck injuries or head injuries…,” he said.

The driver sustained scrapes and bruises in the single-vehicle crash. “His seatbelt saved him honestly,” the governor said.

Waikoloa Solar + Energy is located along Waikoloa Road, approximately 7 1/2 miles from Queen Kaahumanu Highway in South Kohala.

It’s the island’s first and largest solar-plus-storage project that’s expected to help save customers about $5 a month starting next month, according to Hawaiian Electric.

Green had assisted other motorists involved in crashes on Hawaii island, Maui and Oahu in previous years. In 2019, he rendered aid to a 36-year-old man in Central Oahu after the sport utility vehicle the man was driving collided with a recycling truck on the H-1 freeway in Central Oahu.

The SUV driver, who sustained a deep laceration to his head and a broken nose in the crash, managed to exit the vehicle on his own before Green arrived.

The truck driver was not injured and handed Green first aid supplies which he used to tend to the injured driver before Honolulu Emergency Medical Services arrived.