Story by Sophia Baum, News Reporter
A Chicago man recorded goodbye messages for his wife and children after spending six hours stranded inside a giant gas station sign suspended more than 130 feet off the ground.
Electrician A.J. Gow was working on the truck stop sign in Wilmington, Illinois, on July 21 when a mechanical failure left him fearing for his life.
‘In the moment, it was getting hairy, I was genuinely getting scared, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. And yeah, I was freaking out,’ he said, relaying the incident to ABC7 Chicago.
Gow and a co-worker were using a telescopic boom lift while servicing the huge sign. His co-worker climbed down to get water and a battery-powered fan, but the lift then malfunctioned and could not bring him back up.
Gow was left wedged in a small compartment at the top of the sign.
At first, he expected the problem to be fixed quickly.
But by around 2 pm, he had been trapped for about four hours and he started to worry.
He had no water and no fan, and the heat inside the structure was becoming increasingly difficult to tolerate.
Electrician trapped in 130ft sign records goodbye message to family
Trapped worker feared he would die
‘Eventually I started to feel like crap and I told him, you know, call EMS’ Gow said.
He added that he told his co-worker to call emergency services and do whatever was necessary to get him down.
As the hours passed, Gow grew increasingly frightened that he might not survive the ordeal, his thoughts swiftly turning to his family.
‘I was genuinely getting scared, and I didn’t know what was going to happen,’ he recounted.
He took out his phone and recorded messages for his wife and children in case rescuers could not reach him in time.
‘God forbid if something were to actually happen, it was my final words,’ he explained. ‘So essentially a goodbye without saying goodbye.’
The eventual rescue was complicated by the alarming height of the sign, which stood more than 130 feet above the ground.
Local firefighters who responded to the scene could not simply use their ladders because they reached only about 100 feet. Gow also had no safe way to climb down from inside the structure.
However, rescuers eventually found a lift tall enough to reach him in the nearby city of Joliet.
Electrician trapped in 130ft sign records goodbye message to family
Electrician rescued after hours-long ordeal
Illinois State Police helped escort the equipment to the scene, allowing the rescue team to position it beneath the sign.
Gow was eventually brought safely back to the ground.
‘Although unconventional means were used to effect the rescue due to circumstances, everyone went home safe and uninjured yesterday,’ Wilmington Fire Protection District Deputy Chief Todd Friddle told PEOPLE.
Gow revealed that he was ‘not prepared’ for the incident to attract as much speculation and media attention as it did.
‘I had no idea that I was going to be stuck up here for that long, or was going to be anywhere near that kind of scenario,’ he told WABC.
The experience has nevertheless changed the way Gow approaches his work.
The electrician has returned to servicing signs but plans to remain inside the lift bucket while working at extreme heights rather than risk becoming trapped inside a sign again.
