A 28-year-old fisherman trapped beneath a massive boulder on the Oregon coast was rescued over the weekend after using Apple’s Siri voice assistant to summon help, according to his family.
Joe Little was fishing alone Saturday morning at the Hammond Marina jetty in Astoria, Clatsop County, when a large rock shifted beneath him and pinned him near the high tide line. His grandmother, Kelly Simonson, said Little tried to brace the rock with his feet, but it was too large and slid over him.
With the tide rising and no one nearby, Little faced the real possibility of drowning before help could arrive. His Bluetooth earbuds were still paired to his phone, allowing him to activate Siri and place a 911 call around 7 a.m. without having to reach for the device itself.
“His face got smashed. He’s almost unrecognizable,” his mother, Mindy, told KPTV. “It’s a miracle that my son is alive.”
Sgt. Dylan McCoy of the Warrenton Police Department said responders used an unconventional method to pinpoint Little’s exact location: officers honked their patrol car horns while a 911 dispatcher asked Little over the phone whether the sound was getting closer or farther away.
Once rescuers had a general location, police deployed a drone that spotted Little pinned beneath the boulder, with only his upper body and feet visible. Fire crews then worked carefully to free him, moving smaller rocks around the boulder to create enough space to pull him out.
“They removed some of the smaller ones and that allowed them to move him from underneath the extremely large boulder which had trapped him,” McCoy said.
Officials ultimately determined the jetty’s terrain was too hazardous to carry Little out on foot and called in the U.S. Coast Guard. Footage released by the Coast Guard shows crew members rappelling from a helicopter onto the jetty around 9 a.m. and hoisting Little out on a gurney.
Little is now recovering at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital in Portland, where he is being treated for severe facial injuries, including a broken jaw. He is scheduled to undergo an eight-hour facial reconstruction surgery Thursday.
