PJ Forgione spent the night alone in the wild with a fractured vertebrae.
SEATTLE — A Seattle man is recovering at Harborview Medical Center after falling 60 feet down an embankment in Olympic National Forest on May 4.
BJ Forgione survived a night alone in the wilderness before being rescued by two state wildlife workers who happened to hear his cries for help.
Forgione, who installs microphones in remote forestlands to monitor wildlife for Adventure Scientists, had just finished placing equipment in the Olympics and was hiking back to his car when he said the trail gave way beneath him.
“I was super confident in my step, and the next thing I know I was tumbling backwards,” Forgione said.
The fall left him with severe spinal injuries.
“I fractured my T-12 vertebrae, and that kind of pushed damage to other parts of my spine,” he said.
Two weeks after his fall he cannot move his lower extremities.
Unable to move, without cell service, and with the sun setting, Forgione faced a frightening night alone. He worried about the dangers of being immobile in a remote forest.
“If a big cougar came up or something, I was conscious when I landed, and I knew my legs weren’t working, so I wouldn’t have been able to run away if an animal came up,” he said.
He remained calm and focused on surviving until morning.
“Luckily it wasn’t too cold of a night, so I was like, OK, we’ll kind of figure this out first thing in the morning,” he said.
His rescue came through a stroke of luck.
Noah Collell and Jacob Portnoy, technicians from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, were conducting their annual creek survey near where Forgione had fallen when they heard an unexpected sound.
“We’re coming down this hill and both thought, oh, what’s that sound? We thought it must be an animal or something, but when we got down to the water, we could hear someone say, ‘Help,'” Collell recounted.
A Navy helicopter ultimately transported Forgione to Harborview.
Now alternating between his hospital bed and the rehabilitation unit, Forgione recently celebrated a small milestone — being upgraded to solid foods.
“I’m pretty excited for my sandwich here,” he said.
Friends, family, and an online fundraiser have rallied around him as he faces an uncertain recovery timeline.
Forgione says he is trying to stay positive to carry him through.
“It’s a long road ahead, but I’m trying to stay as optimistic as possible to maintain the momentum,” said Forgione, “I’m very much still here and controlling all of this.”
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