It was 10 seconds of hell for Frank Arce, who should've died after he
went through a wood chipper. "Actually going through the machine itself
wasn't the worst part about it," he said on Wednesday from his hospital
bed at PeaceHealth SW Washington Medical Center. "What was the worst
part (was) the not knowing what was going to happen." Arce was conscious
the entire time.
Arce works at a company that shreds up bark into wood chips. When
something got stuck inside the machine, he went in thinking everything
was turned off – just like they practice – to get the object. But
somebody didn't get the message, and Arce was inside the barrel – about
the diameter of a basketball – that has spikes and claws when he heard
the engine start up.
He is smiling and cracking jokes, but Arce has a broken pelvis,
shattered ankle, bruised liver, broken leg and a cut that runs the
length of his body on the back side that's so deep it crushed his knee.
He's on a lot of pain medication right now. "There was a thought (that I
was going to die) but it was more like something was telling me I
wasn't going to die that day," he said.
"I felt I had a lot of angels out there with me that day –
a lot of people looking out for me." Arce has another two and a half
weeks or so in the hospital, but he said he received the right care
quickly because of the training and help from his co-workers at the
Swanson Bark and Wood Products Co. in Longview. The company's human
resources representative said they are paying 100 percent of Arce's
medical bills and the state Bureau of Labor and Industries is
investigating the incident.
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