He woke up suddenly to the sound of his daughter screaming and a large tree crushing his body.
Now in hospital with serious injuries, Eric Leschied—a 37-year-old man from Tyndall, Man.—is lucky to be alive.
The freak accident happened last Thursday when Leschied and his three children were camping in Blue Lake, Ont. His two young boys slept in a camper with his parents, while he and his 11-year-old daughter decided to share a tent.
He said it started raining heavily early in the morning.
“Around 6:30 in the morning, I woke up to (my daughter) screaming and the tree on top of me,” Leschied told CTV News in an interview from his hospital bed in Winnipeg. “I started screaming.”
A large tree had fallen onto the tent, crushing him as he slept on his side. He said someone from a nearby campground heard the screams and came to help.
“(They) cut the tent open and was able to get my daughter out and completely unscathed—thank the Lord,” he said.
Getting him out was more difficult. Those with him had to wedge logs under the tree and cut the air mattress he had been sleeping on—that gave him just enough room to get out.
“I pushed myself from underneath the tree and knew immediately my hip or my pelvis was broken,” he said.
‘It could have been a very different story’: Family grateful as recovery begins
Leschied said the tree broke his pelvis in three spots and ruptured his bladder. He had to be airlifted to the Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, where he required surgery.
He is now left with a foot-long incision on his abdomen, and a long road to recovery ahead of him.
On Tuesday, Leschied took his first steps towards that recovery, walking from his hospital room with the help of a walker—his family looking on with tears of joy.
“It could have been a very different story,” said his wife Jennifer Leschied, who was at home at the time of the accident. “When you come out on this end, you can’t be anything but grateful that we’re all still here.”
She said the family has a strong faith system and are thankful for what she described as God’s heavenly protection. Both she and her husband are big campers and know how to identify potential risks at a campground. In this case, she said the whole area looked safe.
“Everything was lush, alive and well in that campsite, so you didn’t really think of any of those risk factors,” she said.
Similar incidents across Canada, some with tragic outcomes
Just this year alone, there have been several similar incidents across the country, some of which had tragic outcomes.
A young mother and her five-month-old son were killed by a falling tree at a Vancouver Island campground on July 31.
In June, an Ottawa man was killed when a tree fell on his tent during a severe thunderstorm. He had been camping with his 10-year-old child, who sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
A 13-year-old boy was seriously injured in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park by a falling tree that hit his tent during a thunderstorm. Rescue crews had to travel through debris-filled roads and paddle 300 metres to rescue him and his mother.
In the wake of Leschied’s accident, a GoFundMe page was set up, raising more than $10,000 to help the family as he recovers. Leschied expects to be off work for at least six to eight months.
“It’s hard for us to actually look at it without being overwhelmed with emotion,” Jennifer said. “We’re very grateful.”
As for their children, none of whom were injured, Leschied said they are showing a lot of resiliency.
“My daughter doesn’t want to go in a tent anymore,” he said, adding with a bit of a laugh, “We’ll just go in a camper from now on.”
-with files from CTV’s Jeff Keele
