DANBY -- Five weeks after a tree crushed her son’s car, pinning him inside and injuring him, Andrea Myklebust of Danby reports that “the doctors are happy with the healing in his residual limb, and they're talking about discharging him next week, perhaps as soon as Monday.”
Devin Vollmer, Myklebust’s son, was camping alone in an isolated area of California known as the Lost Coast when a storm toppled a large Douglas fir onto his SUV on Dec. 26. An SOS call to his mother in Vermont set in motion his rescue, which involved emergency crews using chainsaws to clear roadway debris just to get to him.
Some 60 people participated in his rescue, cutting away the tree — 5-foot in diameter — to free him and then helicopter him to hospital in Eureka. Storms prevented his immediate transport to a specialist in San Francisco, where he finally arrived. His leg was amputated, and he remains hospitalized.
In an email, Myklebust wrote that Vollmer’s father, grandfather and brother soon will take him to his home in San Diego.
“It's still early days, and Devin's got a long road ahead of him, but it's amazing to see him reaching this moment," she said.
A GoFundMe page in Devin Vollmer’s name at gofundme.com/f/devin-vollmer has raised more than $10,000 to help offset medical expenses.