Firefighter's freak accident 'I SAVED MY OWN LIFE!'

The quick-thinking volunteer recalls the horror day that ended in his wife begging doctors to remove his leg

December 30, 2022 started just like any other day for Lumsden farmer Thomas Hewitt. But everything changed in seconds when the volunteer firefighter slipped while checking a water tank, impaling his upper thigh on a metal fence post.

"Initially, I was frustrated and annoyed I was injured," recalls Thomas, 37. "Then I ripped my leg off this waratah [a temporary fencing post] and realised my femoral artery was severed and a good flow of blood was coming out." With time crucial if he was to survive the life-threatening injury, it quickly dawned on Thomas he was going to have to save his own life.

"I kicked into survival mode," says Thomas, who's first priority was to stem the bleeding with a makeshift tourniquet fashioned from the overalls he was wearing.

"Stuff I'd learnt through the fire brigade with trauma care was going through my mind at a hundred miles an hour." Then he started calling for help. "I called 111 and told them, 'I've got myself in some mischief. I'm a firefighter from Lumsden. I've severed my artery and don't have long.

Send a helicopter.' "I knew I needed proper tourniquets and there were two in the fire truck, so I called my boss at the fire station and said, 'Get here as quick as you can.' About six minutes later, guys started showing up." Not sure if he was going to make it, Thomas also rang his wife Monique, who was 300 metres away at the farm house, completely unaware of what was happening.

With a vague description - "I'm dying at the water tank" - Monique, Thomas' sister Hilary Anderson and her husband Sean, who were staying for the holidays, leaped in the ute and luckily found Thomas at the first water tank they checked.

Arriving before anyone else, Monique was shocked to find her husband in such a dire state, but there was no time to panic as Thomas immediately started giving them orders.