A Warwickshire farmer who was flown to hospital after his arm was ripped off by machinery is urging locals to support Air Ambulance Week to raise funds to keep life-saving helicopters flying across the county.
The fundraising initiative, which runs from September 8-16, is crucial to the continued existence of services such as Warwickshire & Northamptonshire Air Ambulance.
The air ambulance is a charity and receives no government funding. However, each life-saving mission it flies costs £1,700.
Jim Chapman of Long Itchington, Warwickshire said he has never forgotten how he felt when he knew the air ambulance was coming to his rescue.
“It was the best sound I have ever heard in my life,” he said. “I knew that help was on the way and the situation I found myself in was going to be sorted out. I was immediately put at ease by the kindness of the crew and the care I got was fantastic.”
It took just 10 minutes to fly Jim to hospital; on arrival, he was taken straight into the operating theatre.
Unfortunately, the surgeons couldn’t save his arm and Jim had to come to terms with facing the rest of his life with a prosthetic limb.
The accident proved to be life-changing in more ways than one. Jim went on to become an ambassador for the Farm Safety Foundation, national chairman of the National Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs and was awarded the MBE for services to farm safety in 2012.
He said he relives the accident mentally around 10 times a year.
“I still vividly remember the noise of the helicopter when it came into land and even now when it flies over I am immediately taken back to that day,” he said.
The accident
Jim was only 23 years old when the accident happened on a farm at Brinklow Quarry near Rugby.
He was asked to empty water from underground storage tanks using a tractor and vacuum tanker. When no water was being sucked up he left the tractor engine running, got down from the cab and went to check the machinery.
The fluorescent safety vest he was wearing got caught and in a split second, it was wrapped around a rotating shaft.
“I was flung from where I had been standing right over the top of the tractor. The shaft had ripped my shirt, jumper and my left arm completely off. I lay with my eyes closed and I knew I had lost my arm. I began to scream,” he said.
