A man suffered severe injuries last Tuesday while loading huge
rolls of paper at an Alexander Street factory, but he is now awake
and off life support, a local pastor reports.
GILROY –– A man suffered severe injuries last Tuesday while loading huge rolls of paper at an Alexander Street factory, but he is now awake and off life support, a local pastor reports.
The worker was pinned between a clamp truck – like a forklift with semicircular clamps instead of forks – and a roll of paper on a railroad car, according to Dean Fryer, spokesman for the California Occupational Safety Health Administration. Cal/OSHA opened an investigation into the incident.
“We have not actually sent someone to the site yet, but we are going to look into it,” Fryer said.
The Gilroy Fire Department did not release the victim’s name, age or place of residence.
The accident took place at Bay Sheets, a paper company, just before 7:50 p.m., according to the GFD.
Less than 45 minutes later, Bay Sheets officials asked Malcolm MacPhail, pastor of the New Hope Community Church and chaplain of the Gilroy Police Department, to come and counsel the victim’s fellow workers, many of whom were shaken after witnessing the accident. Some of them had helped extricate the victim from the clamp truck, MacPhail said.
MacPhail said he arrived at Bay Sheets at about 9 p.m. and did a “defusing” with about 20 workers “to make sure the person involved is dealing with his feelings in a proper way.
“Normally, most people are not used to seeing extreme trauma up close and personal,” MacPhail said. “As a police chaplain, I’m used to dealing with these things.”
MacPhail said he gathered the workers together and asked each to describe his involvement in the incident.
“After you go though a traumatic situation, one of the first things you have to do is talk about it,” he added. If one bottles up one’s feelings, “It can become unhealthy both emotionally and mentally.”
A CALSTAR helicopter flew the victim to a San Jose trauma center. Co-workers told MacPhail Thursday that the man was doing much better and no longer in critical condition. He does, however, have a broken collarbone and ribs, the pastor said.
Bay Sheets officials referred all questions to their corporate spokesperson in Austin, Texas, who could not be reached for comment.
