A New Hampshire woman is expected to survive her injuries after she fell into a dumpster on Monday at her housing complex while taking out her trash.
The woman was flung into the back of a trash truck along with the other contents of the dumpster, and went along for the ride as the truck visited a handful of other stops, compacting after each one. Not far from her home, the woman was heard screaming from the back of the truck, and the rescue efforts began. The truck driver saw the woman on an internal safety camera inside the truck and called 911.
“In 32 years, I’ve never seen anything like this my whole career,” Battalion Chief Bob Beaudet told WMUR 9. “It’s alarming, because you don’t really think it’s true. You don’t think it really happens, but in this day and age, times are tough, and people do different things. So, that was definitely one for the books.”
Firefighters used the basket of their ladder truck to hoist the woman out on a stretcher to safety. Neighbors reported hearing her “screaming” and “in agony” from inside the truck. She told firefighters at the scene that she had somehow fallen into the dumpster while disposing of her trash, but wasn’t alert enough to answer further questions. It isn’t clear how long she had been in the dumpster before it was picked up by the truck.
The unidentified woman was transported to a hospital in Manchester. Conflicting reports from the scene say she was in either “serious condition” or had “sustained minor injuries” though is expected to be OK.
I am personally quite freaked out by tight spaces I can’t escape from, like caves. I guess I’ll have to add getting crushed by a trash truck to my list of phobias.