Bad Fall

Yesterday my father-in-law fell 20ft from the Severn Bridge. If you’re in the South West you may have seen it reported on the news, there’s some coverage and even a photo story of the three hour rescue on the BBC website.
The good news is that he’s basically OK, although he had to have surgery last night to deal with two broken legs and a collapsed lung. He’s now stable, and doesn’t have any other serious internal injuries.
It’s a weird experience seeing something that concerns your family on the news like this. In fact my mother-in-law rang him after hearing a report about an accident, so it was through the local news that we first found out. We still don’t have all the details about how the accident happened, but it seems likely that there will be an inquiry. For now we’ve been poring over the pictures trying to imagine how it happened. He was in the towers carrying out a lighting inspection when he fell; he works as an electrician carrying out maintenance of the bridge. He has no memory of the fall itself.