SPRINGFIELD, MASS. (WHDH) - A Springfield man was trapped underneath a fallen tree as Tropical Storm Isaias moved its way up the state earlier this week. His stepson rushed to his rescue.
“I just dropped everything. I go outside, I’m in my boxers. And all I see is… it looked like a jungle,” Ricardo Reyes Jr. said.
Reyes said it all happened Tuesday when he said his stepfather, Efrain Diaz, was trying to protect some items in their yard when the tree went down on top of him.
“I kept asking him ‘what hurts more?’ He kept saying his foot, his foot, his foot. So we went for the branch that had his foot pinned and we used the saw to free him from that,” he said.
Reyes said his neighbors were outside when the tree came crashing down.
Their surveillance video shows how they barely avoided getting crushed themselves.
He said they rushed to help, but it still took 40 minutes to get Diaz out from underneath the tree and to the hospital.
“He has a broken foot, fractured ribs, he said his back may be broken in two spots, but he’s able to move his limbs,” Reyes said.
The tree is still laying in Reyes’ back yard. He said it is a grim reminder of just how close his stepfather came to losing his life.
“He said he’s lucky to be alive, he thought he was gonna die,” he said. “It was… it’s just hard.”
Dias will need surgery though it has not yet been scheduled.
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