I Thought I Would Die When I Got Crushed by Tree During Helene. Being Able to Tell My Kids ‘Daddy’s Okay’ Was a Gift

Mar. 15, 2025

I was sound asleep. I heard the crash and felt all the debris and the weight of the tree. When I woke up, it was already over me. I felt pain immediately and it wasn’t too long before my legs and my arm went numb, but that didn’t stop the pain. The whole left side of my body felt like it was on fire.

I was covered with debris from basically head to toe, literally couldn’t move a muscle. And so the first few seconds I was like, “This is the worst dream ever.” Then as my wits are coming back to me, I just started yelling, “Get it off me! I can’t breathe!”

Sherri was able to call 911 at 6:02 a.m. I definitely had my freak out time yelling, “Tell ‘em to hurry up! I can’t breathe, I’m dying!"

First responders were trying to get me to tell them how I was laying (on my side, making a 90-degree angle with my leg and knee over my hip) and where I was facing, but they could barely hear me because the only opening in the wall behind me was about a softball size hole. I literally was picturing my mouth going straight to that hole as far as getting fresh air.

But although the position I was in was painful, I do think being on my side helped me keep breathing for as long as I did. If I had been on my back, I don’t think I would’ve been able to breathe for very long.

It was probably pushing 7 a.m. before they found out where my head was and they were able to punch through the wall a little bit more and shove an oxygen mask in there for me.

Still, my breathing was very labored. I couldn’t expand my chest at all because of all the weight. Literally all I could do was take very thoughtful, shallow breaths. I had to do that breathing pattern for the next two hours.

During that second hour, there were five or six times that I thought I was going to die. The breathing itself was so hard, and then the pain was so intense that it kind of took my concentration off of breathing.

I was able to communicate with somebody there but talking was taking away from my breathing pattern, which made breathing even more difficult. But when I said it was too hard to keep going, the first responder was there, saying, “You’re doing good. We need you to keep fighting. Just concentrate on that breathing.”

My wife and kids, who were safely on the ground, were worried, but at the time,I was oblivious to anything going on besides my pain and the breathing.

I think it was about 7:45 a.m. that the first responder finally said, “Hey man, We’re going to get ready to lift the tree and see if we can give you some relief.” So that’s the first time that my brain was like, “Oh wow. They might actually can get to me finally.” But they still couldn’t see me because I was under several feet of rubble.

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They finally got the tree up enough and I felt somebody start pulling out sheets of plywood and other construction debris. Then they were running their arm up and down my leg to see where I was so they could start making very specific cuts.

Once they knew exactly where I was, they started building up little platforms and put these big air controlled kind of balloon things that would lift up, which is kind of how they lift cars off of people.

They lifted enough to where I finally got a little bit of relief. That’s really when I felt them pulling things off my legs. Once that started happening, I think they lifted one or two more times and I knew I wasn’t completely under the tree anymore.

A firefighter hooked me under my arms and pulled me about a foot before I yelled that I needed to flip myself on my back. I thought that would be easier for them as they pulled me out, plus I’d already been on my side for two hours with all that weight crashing down on me.

I flipped over and said, “Keep doing what you got to do.” A few seconds later, I started feeling the rain a little bit and thought, “This is the absolute best feeling ever — is that rain just hitting my face.” And then I was fully free.

They put me in some kind of metal basket or stretcher that a helicopter lowers down, like you see in a movie. They put me in that and strapped me down and I was swinging. There were still gusts of 50 to 60 miles per hour winds during the rescue.

I just knew my wife had to be outside somewhere, so my thumbs up was for my wife to hopefully see and know I was okay.

In the ER, they took me to get some CT scans immediately just to make sure my brain and spine were good. When the doctor came in, he said, “I already got some good news. Let’s kind of start at the top and go down.”

He mentioned every area on my body where they thought I was probably injured, but told me everything looked good.

He said, “I don’t have any explanation. You probably shouldn’t have lived through that.” I’m astounded, and my wife asked him, “Are you sure there’s no broken bones?” He said, “No.” And so we kind of broke down a little bit in disbelief, but also joy. I was preparing myself for the worst.

Somewhere between 3 and 4 p.m., we were reunited with the kids after leaving the hospital. We were just overjoyed. I know my oldest ran to me because she’s more aware of what was going on and how bad it was. And they were just happy to see “Daddy’s okay”. And so it was a couple of single hugs and then I probably picked up the twins even though I probably shouldn’t have. We just had a nice family embrace.

Insurance is going to be there to help, but it’s a long process and it’s not just putting back our house. We’re going to be in therapy because this was very traumatic for not only the kids, but for all of us. There’s going to be a lot of stuff we’re going to have to overcome and redo and rebuild in our lives, so we were just appreciative that [Brandon Guffey, theGoFundMeorganizer] saw that as an opportunity to put that out there and try to help us.

I still struggle every day thinking about it. But at the same time, I’m working on not letting little things bother me and looking at it like, “Hey, you could not be alive right now.”

When I get worked up over small things, whether it’s just the normalcy of a day and kids, the twins being 5 and driving us crazy on the best of days, I’m trying to turn that dial down internally and say, “Hey, man, just enjoy this one.” Just every moment the rest of my life is a gift. It’s almost like a second chance at life that most people don’t get if they’re in a dire situation like that. And so it’s really trying to dig into that and slow down a little bit.

We believe wholeheartedly that there were lots of miracles that happened to us and around us. For my kids to literally climb a tree, go down a branch that’s going through while in the house — they knew they needed to get to safety. All of my daughters are my heroes and I couldn’t be more proud of how they handled themselves in a situation. It just allowed me to focus on keeping myself alive long enough to let the rescuers do their thing.

source: people.com