INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Tim Rutledge’s eyelid had frozen
shut. His voice was hoarse after competing for hours with bitter-cold
wind and humming truck engines while screaming for help. He was losing
consciousness, pinned under his rig in sub-zero temperatures at an
Indiana truck stop.
The longtime Florida truck driver had crawled
under his truck with a hammer to loosen ice from his brakes around 4
a.m. Monday, as record-breaking temperatures swept into the state. But
the truck suddenly settled deeper into the snow, pinning him beneath an
axle.
The 53-year-old was trapped, helpless as his cellphone rang
dozens of times in a coat pocket he couldn’t reach. It had been about
eight hours. He feared he was near death.
Then his phone suddenly
toppled from his pocket, its vibrating ring enough to finally wiggle it
free. He was able to scoop it up with his right hand inside a frozen
glove, use its voice dial to call a company dispatcher and muster a
quiet plea for help.
"I said ‘Whoever this is, don’t hang up on me
because it’s going to be the last time that I’ll be able to call. I
can’t call out and I can’t answer the phone,’" Rutledge said Thursday,
recalling his experience as he sat in a leather armchair at IU Health
Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis.
Doctors said his body
temperature was so low when he arrived at the hospital that just one
more hour likely would have been fatal. Yet he was released from the
hospital on Thursday and planned to fly back home to Orlando, Fla., with
little more than numbness in his left hand and side where the axle had
pinned him.
Rutledge noted that the phone calls from his wife,
Lisa, began soon after he missed making his typical early morning
check-in with her.
"I used to think it was kind of a hassle, but I
always called her just so she knew where I was at," he said. "I won’t
take her for granted now. She saved me."
Rutledge had been driving
a load from Florida when he stopped Sunday evening at the truck stop,
less than an hour away from his destination. As he slept in his cab,
several inches of snow fell and temperatures plunged. He woke up to
frozen brakes.
Steve Moseley, a dispatcher with First Coast
Express of Jacksonville, Fla., said he feared the worst after numerous
calls to Rutledge went unanswered. Moseley answered Rutledge’s call for
help Monday afternoon, and said his voice grew quieter during their
conversation until it dimmed to a whisper.
"At one time I called out to him and he didn’t say anything," Moseley said. "That scared
me a bit."
His
trucking company called the truck stop and emergency workers were
summoned to search for him as temperatures dropped to more than 10 below
zero in the area, with wind gusts of 30 mph leading to wind chills of
negative 35 or colder.
It took time for workers to find his semi
amid the sea of parked trucks at the Pilot Travel Center in Whiteland,
just south of Indianapolis.
By the time he reached the hospital, Rutledge’s body temperature had fallen to about 86 degrees.
Dr.
Timothy Pohlman, a trauma surgeon who treated him, said another hour
outside likely would have been fatal for Rutledge. But he said being
under the truck likely shielded him somewhat from the dangerous wind
gusts.
"I think just the fact that he had to crawl under a semi to
figure out why he broke down in a way forced him to do what is taught
in a lot of survival courses for people who have to work in extreme
environments," Pohlman said.
Pohlman said Rutledge, who somehow emerged without any frostbite injuries, should fully recover.
Rutledge said he was lucky to be alive.
"There
was another hand in this," he said. "If my phone would’ve dropped the
other way, I could never have called anyone. If it (the truck) would’ve
sunk any farther, I wouldn’t have had a need to call anyone."
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Associated Press writer Summer Ballentine in Indianapolis contributed to this story.
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