Nearly a week has passed since two pickup trucks crashed head-on on the highway between Fort McMurray and Edmonton, leaving seven dead – two of the first people who stopped to help spoke to CTV News about what they witnessed Thursday.

Eli Day and Dion Lefebvre who were travelling on Highway 63 in a moving van, and were the first to pull over at the scene moments after the crash on Highway 63 Friday, April 27.

Day, who is also a father, helped pull three-year-old Timothy Wheaton, one of two survivors of the crash, from the burning wreckage – and can't hide his emotion when he talks about the little boy he helped rescue.

"[We have] some serious connection anyway, for only knowing him for fifty minutes," Day said.

"There was no time to think, there was just time to do," Dion Lefebvre said.

Lefebvre told CTV News a northbound truck attempted to pass the moving van, which was heading north on Highway 63, before it crashed into the other truck.

"As a human and a father, you don't hesitate," Lefebvre said.

"I saw the accident happen over my shoulder and the wreckage in the rearview mirror."

He said about six other people stopped to help in the aftermath of the collision.

Lefebvre said he also helped pull 11-year-old Faith Kondusky Sennett from the other vehicle after it caught fire; she later died from her injuries.

Meanwhile, Day said he was helping the other survivor of the crash, Mark Penney.

Penney is still in hospital.

"We all worked very well together in a chaotic situation," Lefebvre said. "It was amazing to see humanity doing its thing."

News of the efforts of strangers in helping their loved ones came as a comfort to those mourning the tragic loss of life in the crash.

"It means a lot, it means a lot," Julia Wheaton, the great-aunt of Timothy Wheaton said in a phone interview from her home in Frederickton, Newfoundland.

"He risked his life to save somebody, and I think he did a wonderful job."

For one of Timothy's rescuers, he wants the grieving family to know they did the best they could for the young boy.

"I think we did the best we could in a terrible situation," Day said.

"I had Timothy in my hands the entire time."

With files from Jessica Earle