Lynn Man Nearly Killed By Utility Pole During Hurricane Sandy
LYNN (CBS) - Not many folks survive a head shot from a telephone pole, but Chris Murray did.
The neck brace and 15 staple scar are reminders of the day Hurricane Sandy hit, and Chris put his young daughters in the car for a trip to look at the angry surf.
But as he stood in the street chatting with a neighbor, a wind gust uprooted a huge maple tree which snagged wires on the way down and snapped a pair of telephone poles.
"Next thing I know I'm on the ground, grabbing my head," says Chris.
Acting like a bungee cord, the wires had slung a broken pole into Chris, cutting his head, cracking two vertebrae, six ribs, and a collarbone and collapsing a lung.
"Yea it could have instantly killed me," he says.
Still, he bounced up, saw his kids were fine and scrambled away from the dangling wires.
His neighbor quickly became his ambulance.
Chris says, "It wasn't more than 15-20 seconds; I think I was in his pickup heading to the hospital."
He spent seven days at Mass General and will now spend several weeks recouping at home in his recliner, pondering a lesson learned: "You know maybe stay home when the governor says to stay home."
Chris says the new poles are thicker than the old ones, but his daughters still worry about it happening again.
