Joseph Furtek didn’t hesitate when requested why he believes he survived an Oct. 18 rockslide that pounded his van with boulders on a freeway within the San Bernardino Mountains.
“There’s no question this was divine intervention,” the 58-year-old Lake Arrowhead resident stated Friday, Nov. 15.
“I mean, I should have died.”
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Joseph Furtek sits in his hospital mattress Friday, Nov. 15, 2024 at Loma Linda College Medical Middle. Furtek was critically injured when his van was hammered by a rockslide on Freeway 18 close to Crestline on Friday, Oct. 18, 2024. (Picture by Anjali Sharif-Paul, The Solar/SCNG)
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There have been many who helped.
There was one other driver — an “angel,” Furtek stated — who stopped behind his demolished van alongside Freeway 18 in a spot referred to as “The Narrows,” close to the Crestline turnoff, the place the highway hugs a steep cliff.
“He got out of his car, held my hand and prayed with me,” Furtek stated.
Furtek, who’s 6 toes 6 inches tall and was pinned contained in the collapsed cabin, stated San Bernardino County firefighters reduce him out of the wreckage and stabilized him for an important ambulance trip down the mountain.
“I was bleeding to death,” Furtek added, saying rescuers thought-about amputating his proper leg.
He misplaced about 75% of his blood on the scene.
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When Furtek arrived at Loma Linda College Medical Middle’s trauma middle, surgeons scrambled to save lots of his life — and leg, medical doctors stated. He had suffered a number of compound fractures — together with an particularly extreme fracture to his proper femur or thigh bone — and a concussion.
“He was really on death’s door for the first 72, maybe 96 hours,” stated his sister, Laura Furtek, a nurse who lives in San Luis Obispo.
Laura Furtek organized an internet fundraising marketing campaign to assist pay her brother’s medical bills. The marketing campaign had raised almost $11,500 as of Tuesday morning, Nov. 19.
Boulders got here ‘bouncing down the hill’
Joseph Furtek stated a number of individuals concerned in his rescue have shared with him the main points surrounding the accident. He doesn’t know precisely what occurred as a result of the pressure of the slide knocked him unconscious.
“I don’t remember anything two days prior to the accident,” he stated in an interview from Loma Linda. “I don’t remember a thing.”
“And I don’t remember anything after the accident. I don’t remember ever being admitted to this hospital.”
Furtek stated that simply final week he was proven images of the twisted pile of steel that previously was his Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van.
“When I saw them it made me appreciate how lucky I am,” he stated.
In a photograph revealed the day of the slide, a boulder is seen instantly in entrance of the van and one other is seen resting subsequent to the motive force’s door. The driving force-side door is open. The cabin space is caved in.
“These rocks were so huge that they probably came bouncing down the hill,” Furtek stated.
Whereas he considers himself fortunate, luck doesn’t equate to consolation.
Furtek has endured a lot ache. And he has largely been confined to a hospital mattress.
“It’s driving me crazy,” he stated.
Alert and sporting a full head of hair and a grey beard, Furtek moved his arms and left leg comparatively freely whereas sitting up in mattress in the course of the interview. However his badly broken proper foot was wrapped in a lavender boot bearing a purple label that learn: “Do not stand or walk in boot.”
“If I get out of bed, an alarm goes off and a bunch of people rush to the room,” he stated.
Furtek stated he has been informed he should not put weight on his proper foot till Jan. 24.
