- Put in your prayers people, there's still no update on his condition.
A man was airlifted to a hospital early Monday morning after being cut from a pasta machine in South Windsor. A family member said several hours of surgery took place Monday, but the patient’s condition was not provided.
He worked at Carla’s Pasta and was freed by rescuers just after 6:00 a.m. following the accident.
“We found a male party with his arm stuck down the machine,” said Deputy Fire Chief Timothy Papp. “It had rotated around kind of like a spinner device inside the machine that’s used to make pasta.”
His condition was described as “life-threatening” when he was taken to the hospital. It took workers over two hours to free the man’s arm from the pasta machine.
“The problem was it was a food-grade stainless steel, so it’s very difficult to cut, so we used every cutting device that we had on our rescue,” Papp said. “He was actually speaking with us the whole time and he was actually very helpful with us, the few times trying to remove him and get him unstuck. He was able to tell us what was stuck, how his arm was stuck [and] what we could do to get him out of there.”
The man was brave, even with his extensive injuries. Mutual Aid was called in from the South Windsor Public Works Department, and the East Hartford and Broad Brook fire departments. They provided any additional cutting tool to aid in the rescue.
A Life Star emergency helicopter was at the scene in just 10 minutes, to airlift the man to the hospital.
“I know that he took some injuries to his chest, to his arm and to his face and to his head,” Papp said. “For while he was in there.”
Employees think the man may have been inspecting the pasta machine before he was hurt. The section of the warehouse where the accident took place will remain closed for investigators.
“They’ve been advised that that area, they have to wait until [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] comes to do an investigation and then the cleanup,” Papp said.