NEW SHARON — A St. Albans logger was injured Tuesday afternoon when he was pinned between a skidder and a full load of wood for about three hours in a log yard off Jersey Avenue.
Wayne Knight, 65, was flown to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston where his condition was not available as of 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, a nursing supervisor said.
New Sharon Fire Chief Jeff Brackett said the man had hauled out a twitch of logs and left the John Deere 540 idling while he went to unhook the wood. The skidder rolled back and pinned his pelvis area between the logs and skidder. The accident happened about 2 p.m. and the Fire Department didn’t get the call until 5:13 p.m., Brackett said.
“We went in and boarded him, collared him and took his vital signs and hauled him out in a firefighter’s Explorer,” the chief said. NorthStar ambulance crews drove him to Allen’s Auction House on Industry Road where firefighters set up a landing zone for a medical helicopter.
Brackett said real estate agent Jeff Harris of New Sharon was the one who located Knight and called the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department on his cell phone. Harris was waiting to show a piece of property on Jersey Avenue, which is off Industry Road, and heard someone yelling, Brackett said.
Harris said he was sitting in his truck at the time.
“I didn’t think anything of it at first,” he said, but then he heard it again and decided to check it out. Harris said he started walking down the gravel road from where the sound was coming from and heard a skidder running. He went toward it and didn’t see anyone at first, and then he found the man.
Knight told him to turn the steering wheel on the skidder, Harris said. When he did, it released the pressure on Knight who then slumped down onto the wood.
“I grabbed him and set him down on the ground on a tarp,” Harris said. “I asked him if he was OK, and he said he was not. He was hurting really bad. . . . I wanted to get him safe.”
The logger had been working at the site for a couple of months, Brackett said.
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