Man rescued after spending hours trapped inside a bin lorry

A man was transported to hospital in a serious condition after being trapped inside a bin lorry in San Francisco last month.

The San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD) said in a statement that binmen heard screaming coming from a garbage truck at around 4:11am on 2 September.

The SFFD said a fire truck was ‘dispatched to a report of a person trapped inside a Recology garbage truck on the 100 block of Mason St’.

“The driver of the truck had been flagged down and was told there was yelling inside the garbage area of his truck,” they said.

“Crews are currently working to remove all the garbage to access the victim.”

SFFD public information officer Captain Mariano Elias told PEOPLE that 25 firefighters were called to help pull the man out of the lorry for over two hours.

During the rescue, the man remained conscious and ‘verbal’, Elias said.

“I personally heard him yell a few times,” he recalled. “I don’t know if that was in pain or just frustration.”

Once the individual, whose identity hasn’t been shared publicly, was successfully removed from garbage truck, paramedics accessed the man’s arm to administer an intravenous drip to protect him from crush syndrome.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, crush syndrome is a life-threatening condition that can cause muscle breakdown, releasing ‘potentially toxic muscle cell components and electrolytes into the circulatory system’.

It can cause local tissue injury, organ dysfunction, and metabolic abnormalities, including acidosis, hyperkalemia and hypocalcemia.

“It’s an unfortunate situation to lead someone to go into a dumpster, whether that was to sleep or fish through some things to find something for himself or something to eat, but the good part of his outcome is that he’s alive,” Elias said.

Recology spokesperson Robert Reed said the incident was ‘pretty unusual’.

Samuel Menchaca, a public information officer with the Fire Department, said one firefighter suffered a laceration injury and was taken to a hospital in stable condition.

LADbible Group has reached out to the San Francisco Fire Department for an update.