Idaho man survives being impaled by 40-pound piece of farm equipment

An Idaho man is sharing his story after he was impaled by a 40-pound spear.

Justin Firth was building a fence when a hay bale spear attachment fell off a loader. It pierced his back and went out through his stomach.

"I felt something hit me and I went to the ground," Firth told East Idaho News. "I looked up and I was looking around to find out what had happened, and I saw that belt tine sticking through me and into the ground."

Firth's colleagues used heat to cut the spear from the machine.

"Pretty mind boggling and pretty scary to know what it is that's sticking through you," he said.

It took doctors several hours to remove the spear. If it had gone just a few millimeters to the left or right, doctors say it could have killed him.

"It's one of the most important things to learn about when dealing with the pre-hospital and the early hospital care of impalement injuries is not to remove the the object," a doctor explained. "The object missed his spinal cord. It missed his aorta. It missed the tube connecting his kidney to his bladder by a few centimeters."