Maxime Lajoie will remember the evening of September 24 all his life… but for a very tragic reason: isolated 330 kilometers north of Baie-Comeau, he made a false maneuver which caused his excavator to fall on its two legs. Lacking another means of communication, only an SOS call by satellite, made from his iPhone, allowed him to escape without too much damage.
Mr. Lajoie had been thinking about widening the dirt road that leads to his chalet for a few months. Located a few dozen kilometers from Route 389 and the Gabriel relay, 330 kilometers north of Baie-Comeau, the dirt road in question is not used very often. The vegetation quickly took over. Using his excavator, the construction contractor decided that he would weed it himself, in his spare time.
Alone, in an isolated location – no network coverage, no road traffic – Maxime Lajoie had been operating his excavator for a few hours when it got stuck in some rough grass. It was 3:45 p.m. Trying to free it, he dragged the entire machine towards the ditch. The fall was slow: Maxime Lajoie was able to lift his legs hoping to land on his feet. However, his excavator, a John Deere 6G with an open cab, followed him, and with it his weight of 2,600 kilos. On both legs.
“I fell so gently…” he remembers. “In fact, if the shovel had fallen any other way, there would never have been an accident. “But the pain was incredible,” he recalls. “In my pockets I had a knife. My friends made fun of me before that, because I always carried my knife around. After I fell, I figured I’d dig around my feet to get out, except I was on a rock too big to get free. »
A little over an hour later, the shovel is still cutting off blood circulation in his legs. Maxime Lajoie takes out his knife again and tries to free them at least a little to allow the blood to circulate to his feet. “I had to push on the fracture. With the pain, that was the hardest part. I had to do it three times. »
At least afterwards the blood could start circulating again. And he, who feared fainting, was able to remain conscious throughout.
Satellites to the rescue
In his pockets, Maxime Lajoie also had his phone. “In winter, I go snowmobiling. It’s really a beautiful area here in the winter. At Christmas last year, I bought a new phone and, as we have no network at the chalet, I took the opportunity to buy an iPhone 14, because I was told that it had a function of emergency call via satellite. I never thought I would have to use it for myself…”
Ten minutes after his fall, still a little in shock, he tried to call the emergency services. No signal, therefore no call. But his phone activates its satellite call function, which allows him to send short text messages to an emergency center, which will then alert local authorities.
“I didn’t have very good satellite coverage either,” he recalls. “It took one to three minutes [pour envoyer] each message. But the emergency services lady was able to call an ambulance. » She also contacted the Gabriel relay, an outfitter located not far from the scene of the accident, where Maxime hoped that an acquaintance would know where he lived and could help him.
This is ultimately what happened: friends found him, around 5:45 p.m., then freed him from under the excavator. They then headed back in the van, hoping to come across the ambulance that the emergency services had contacted.
It will have taken an hour. Adding the four-hour drive to Baie-Comeau, Maxime Lajoie was finally able to obtain care around 11 p.m. He immediately underwent surgery.
Keep in touch
Maxime Lajoie had the tibia and fibula of one leg fractured. He suffered two fractures to his foot on his other leg. He currently uses a wheelchair. Lucky in his misfortune, the orthopedist calculates that he will be able to start walking normally again in a few months. “I probably won’t have any after-effects,” says the main person concerned.
A week later, he still feels pain in both legs. He also regrets having been reckless in failing to carry a means of contacting his loved ones in the event of a problem. “I blame myself: we have portable radios at the chalet. We keep them with us when we snowmobile. We should have one with us at all times…and not just in our van when it’s 300 meters away. »
Luckily, he had a phone in his pocket capable of connecting via satellite to an emergency service. “It risks pushing other manufacturers to adopt the same technology,” he believes.
Canada has been debating for years the importance of complete coverage of the territory by cellular networks. It’s difficult: the country is huge. That said, there are solutions that can help in an emergency. Maxime Lajoie tested one despite himself…