A Lake Arrowhead man continues his recovery nearly a month after his leg and motor home were crushed in a massive rockslide on Highway 18 near Crestline.
“If anybody had been in the passenger seat, they would have been dead — there’s no question,” said Joseph Furtek from his hospital bed at Loma Linda University Medical Center. “I spoke to one of the officers who was on the scene, and he said when they arrived, they thought it was a fatality — that there’s no way this person lived. So I’m very, very blessed to be alive.”
Furtek said he can’t remember anything about the violent rockslide, but said he’s grateful for the good Samaritans who helped him that day, as well as the doctors at the hospital who helped save his right leg.
“I completely crushed my right leg,” he explained. “I mean there was even discussion about amputating it at the scene; and even in the ER, the trauma unit, because I was losing so much blood out of this leg that they gave me 12 units of blood.”
Furtek said he lost nearly 75% of the blood in his body.