I have several questions about this story. A man miraculously survived after falling to asleep on the railroad tracks and getting struck by the train.
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Why did the man go asleep on the railroad tracks? How did he survive? Was he unscathed? Well, I can answer the latter of these questions. The man indeed survived, but he was not unscathed. Rescue crews worked for almost two hours to free his left hand. It got entangled in the axle, which frankly sounds painful.
As far as surviving, the train fortunately was moving slowly. Authorities said the incident happened at the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks on Monday. The freight train ran over the 20-year-old man, according to a post from the Ann Arbor Fire Department.
However, he became injured due to the train. His "left hand was entangled in the rear axle of the lead locomotive." It was "pinned between the wheel, axle, and wear gear."
Man Ran Over By Train
They wrote, "Due to the patient's location combined with the strength of the metal of this part of the locomotive, extrication efforts were incredibly challenging. As the incident approached the one-hour mark, AAPD drove out the flight crew from Survival Flight along with a surgical team from U-M Dept of Surgery in preparation for a possible field amputation."
In an interview with WJBK, fire chief Mike Kennedy explained why it was difficult to free the man.
"There was limited access, and all of that is really significant metal, so a lot of our normal tools and techniques don't work for something that extraordinary," he said. "There's no lifting that locomotive." However, they kept at trying to free the man. Fortunately, they didn't have to amputate the man's hand after all.
They later transported him to a hospital. Officials said he was also in stable condition. However, officials warned that situations like this don't really happen. Usually when someone gets hit by a train then it's a fatal incident.
"This was a once in career incident for those involved. Normally, person versus train incidents are fatal," fire officials wrote in their statement.
