A.J. Gow, an electrician from Chicago, recorded goodbye messages for his family on July 21 after becoming trapped for several hours inside a gas station sign more than 130 feet above the ground in Wilmington, Illinois.
Gow was working with a co-worker on the truck stop sign when a mechanical failure with their telescopic boom lift prevented him from returning to the ground. He was left wedged inside a small compartment of the sign.
Initially, Gow expected the issue to be resolved quickly. However, after approximately four hours trapped without water or a fan, and with temperatures rising inside the structure, his anxiety grew.
"In the moment, it was getting hairy, I was genuinely getting scared, and I didn’t know what was going to happen," Gow told ABC7 Chicago. "And yeah, I was freaking out."
He instructed his co-worker to call emergency services. As the hours passed and his fear intensified, Gow took out his phone to record messages for his wife and children, "God forbid if something were to actually happen, it was my final words," he explained. "So essentially a goodbye without saying goodbye."
The rescue effort was complicated by the sign's significant height. Local firefighters' ladders only reached about 100 feet, and Gow had no safe means to exit from inside the compartment. The Wilmington Fire Protection District Deputy Chief Todd Friddle stated, "Although unconventional means were used to effect the rescue due to circumstances, everyone went home safe and uninjured yesterday."
Rescuers eventually obtained a sufficiently tall lift from the nearby city of Joliet, with assistance from the Illinois State Police to transport it to the scene. Gow was then safely brought to the ground.
The incident has led Gow to adjust his work practices. While he has returned to servicing signs, he now plans to remain inside the lift bucket when working at extreme heights to avoid a similar situation.
