Lake Arrowhead man continues recovery nearly a month after his leg and RV were crushed in a massive landslide on Highway 18 near Crestline.

“If someone had been sitting in the passenger seat, they would have died, there’s no doubt about it,” Joseph Furtek said from his hospital bed at Loma Linda University Medical Center. “I spoke to one of the police officers who was at the scene and he said that when they arrived they thought it was a foregone conclusion, that there was no chance of this person surviving. So I’m very, very lucky to be alive.”

Furtek said he doesn’t remember anything about the violent slide, but said he’s grateful to the good Samaritans who helped him that day, as well as the hospital doctors who helped save his leg. RIGHT.

“I completely crushed my right leg,” he explained. “I mean, there was even discussion about amputating it on the spot; and even in the emergency room, in the trauma unit, because I was losing so much blood from that leg that they donated 12 units of blood.”

Furtek said he lost nearly 75 percent of the blood in his body.

“I was at the point where, you know, I could die,” he said.

Dr. Erin Chang of Loma Linda University Medical Center said Furtek was very lucky to have survived.

“When we look at a leg injury, we look at many factors,” Chang said. “The first is the severity of the injury to the bone and the blood vessels. Fortunately, they were able to examine the blood vessels and they were good. So the orthopedic surgeons were able to reconstruct his leg.”

Furtek also suffered head trauma.

“I’ll wake up and be convinced I’m somewhere else and get up and try to walk,” he said. “They had to hold me back a few times, but they were amazing.”

Furtek’s sister started a GoFundMe campaign to Laura Furtek Fundraiser: Support Joseph Furtek’s Road to Recovery to pay for medical bills, as well as to help pay for his camper, which was destroyed in the incident.

“This RV was going to be my residence until I found a place to reside,” Furtek said. “I’m very grateful and I have a lot of gratitude to the people who responded; some of them were very generous, and that’s going to help me a lot because when I bought this Sprinter, it would be my residence.

“I just bought it two days before this incident. So it came at a bad time; it really put a strain on me. But you know, I have my life, and I’m very lucky to have it.”