Eric “Rick” Sorenson knew he didn’t want to die, but faced with extreme dehydration after hours trapped under an ATV at the bottom of a 4.5-metre embankment and coming nightfall, he had to call upon his late father’s lessons for a chance at rescue.
“He was in the Navy. He taught me … to get people’s attention,” Sorenson told Global News from his hospital bed.
But how to get attention?
Several neighbours had already passed by the spot where he had crashed without noticing him after he failed to return from a trip to the grocery store on the afternoon of Aug. 10 in Sydenham, north of Kingston, Ont.
While the South Frontenac man was concerned about what he would do if coyotes approached under cover of night, the setting sun also provided an opportunity. He could hear traffic above and so he began flickering his lights to try to get attention.
“At 9:00, I’ve been hearing that the fire truck’s going by,” he said, saying he turned the lights on and off to no avail. At 9:30 p.m., he did it again.
“I just said, ‘Please see this.’ Did the same thing. He drove by, I heard him, he turned right… He backed up because they got backup beepers.”
He flickered the light again and the firefighter, returning from fighting a vegetation blaze, came down.
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“He thought it was an abandoned four-wheeler,” Sorenson said. “I waved my arm.”
The firefighter was startled, shouting, “Oh my God!” before asking how long he had been down there. Sorenson wasn’t sure, but guessed it had been since at least 1:30 p.m.
Sorenson’s ordeal began when, according to him, his mother was cooking burgers for lunch and realized they were out of buns, so he offered to head into the village and pick some up.
However, Marie Hannah tells a slightly different story.
“He wanted hamburgers in the worst way,” she said. They only had shaved hamburger in the freezer, so he told her he would go down to the village to pick some up.
When he failed to return, she phoned the village Foodland.
“They said, ‘No Marie, we have not seen Eric today, we miss his jokes.’ And I said, ‘Well, I better get on the blower.’ Well, nobody else saw him.”
The neighbours went and looked, many going right past the embankment he was trapped in.
Sorenson said he lost control of the four-wheeler due to suction of the gravel. He had slowed down, going roughly 40 km/h but it caught him off guard. The ATV rolled multiple times down the 4.5-metre embankment before pinning him underneath, crushing his foot and part of his leg.
In addition to the aftermath of the crash itself, Sorenson was left waiting in extreme heat — feeling like 40 C with the humidity — without any water.
When he finally arrived in hospital, he was diagnosed with extreme dehydration.
Medical staff worked quickly to try to relieve the pressure on his leg, but it was later determined that amputation was required. Eleven days later, he underwent amputation on his right leg about 20 cm below the knee.
While Hannah says she was “elated” to learn her son had been found, she noted, “The worst is yet to come.”
“He’s got a lot to learn all over again. And you take one step at a time.”
Maryann Ruttan, whose partner is Sorenson’s stepbrother, has started a GoFundMe to help support the family.
“(It’s) primarily to help him with getting the house arranged,” Ruttan said. “Ramps, doors… prosthetics that he’s going to need in the future — anything to alleviate the stress and strain of the financial burden from the family.”
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