Local LCRA Workers Save a Man Pinned In Flipped Skid Steer
Two local guys are being hailed as heroes, even if they don’t think they did anything special.
“We were just doing what I hope anybody would do,” said Brett Rohde of Fayetteville.
They saved a man Friday who was in a very serious situation.
Rohde and his LCRA co-worker Dakota Murrow were driving Friday morning in the Northrup area near the Lee and Fayette County line.
“We looked off to the left, about 75 yards off the road in a dry creek and there was a skid steer overturned, and we were like, ‘That doesn’t look right,” Rohde said.
“I turned around and parked the truck in the ditch,” Murrow said. “As soon as I turned the truck off we could hear somebody yelling for help.”
The duo jumped the fence, called 911 and then called some of their LCRA co-workers.
The guy in the skid steer had been cutting brush and trees on the uneven ground near the creek, and somehow the skid steer had flipped when a tree gave way, with a stump crushing through the front window and jamming itself against the driver’s legs.
He couldn’t move and his phone had flown out of his pocket when he flipped.
“He was pinned between the door and the glass, with no controls and his phone on the ground, broken,” Murrow said.
“The guy said he didn’t know how long he was trapped there, he said it could have been 30 minutes or could have been two hours but it felt like an eternity,” Rohde said.
When a pair of fellow LCRA workers, Travis Powell and Adam Edmiston arrived on the scene, they along with Rohde and Murrow used the winches on their LCRA trucks to stabilize the skid steer, and cut the stump with a chain saw.
The Giddings Volunteer Fire Department used the Jaws of Life to eventually cut the guy free. The man said his legs were numb, but ended up suffering no serious injuries.
“The guy was awfully grateful we stopped,” Murrow said.
“We didn’t even get his name,” Rohde said.
Both Rohde and Murrow don’t feel like they did anything extraordinary.
“I just hope someone would stop and help me too,” Murrow said.