Lawrence firefighters pull resident’s hand from snowblower, shovel his driveway

LAWRENCE, MASS. (WHDH) - A Lawrence man who got his hand caught in his snowblower Tuesday was rescued by Lawrence firefighters — who then stayed to shovel his driveway.

David Joslin said he made an unwise decision to reach into the chute of his snowblower in order to clear it out.

“I should’ve known better but I wasn’t thinking at the time,” Joslin said. “I put my hand at the top of the chute and when I did it sucked my hand right in.”

After a 911 call, Lawrence fighters from Engine 6 arrived, dismantled the snowblower and freed Joslin’s hand.

“Anytime we can help any one of our citizens, it’s a good thing,” said firefighter Juan Maldonado.

As Joslin rode to the hospital to get two fingers stitched up, the firefighters decided to shovel out the area around his wife’s car, so she could go meet him in the emergency room.

Then they decided to shovel the whole driveway — and reassemble the snowblower.

“We have shovels on the front of the truck, usually we go around shoveling hydrants in the city anyway,” said firefighter Jean Jimenez. “So we had shovels and we shoveled it up.”

“[It was] spur of the moment,” said firefighter Kevin McCarthy. “Everyone in the department, if they’re out and about and can lend a hand, they tend to do so.”

Joslin arrived home with stitches in two fingers and a new appreciation for the city’s firefighters, and he and his wife returned to the station with doughnuts for the crew.

“They went above and beyond, above and beyond … you couldn’t ask for a better group of guys,” Joslin said of the shoveling. “They didn’t even have to do that, once they got my hand out they could’ve just said ‘OK, put him in an ambulance and take him to the hospital,’ they did their job and they could’ve left but they didn’t do it.”

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