By Owen Boss
Staff Writer
HADLEY - Local firefighters frantically searched a field off Mill Valley Road Thursday afternoon for a critically injured farmer who used his cell phone to call for help as he lay trapped under his tractor, which had rolled over down an embankment and into a brook.
When the man was finally found, he was transported by Life Flight helicopter to Baystate Medical Center in Springfield to be treated for the numerous injuries he suffered in the rollover, Deputy Fire Chief George Moriarty said.
Hadley police declined to identify the accident victim Thursday evening without permission from the police chief, who was unavailable.
At 3:40 p.m., police said they began receiving calls from the farmer, who repeatedly told them he was injured and under his tractor off Mill Valley Road but couldn't specify where he was. Moriarty said he was trapped for "quite a while," as firefighters combed the property for the upturned vehicle.
By 4:15 p.m., from the transmission sent when the man called 9-1-1, state police determined his exact position on the farm using satellite imagery and directed responders to the scene of the accident, among a row of trees in a narrow brook about a quarter-mile from the street.
After enlisting the help of a bucket loader from a nearby farm, firefighters freed the man from underneath the vehicle about 25 minutes later, Moriarty said.
Paramedics then loaded the farmer into a waiting helicopter that had landed on the access road leading to the brook and rushed him to the hospital. His condition was unknown Thursday night.
Kenneth J. Parsons, a farmer who lives at 140 Mill Valley Road, said the man was injured on farmland belonging to Allard's Farm Inc.
Local police and firefighters were assisted on scene by members of the state police and the Amherst Fire Department.
Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.
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