We enjoy some odd news stories around these parts, and one of the most interesting recent ones comes from the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. There, on Little Round Top (site of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s famed defense on July 2, 1863, and source of many a “Bayonets!” meme), a man was trapped inside a portable toilet by a fallen log (heh) Friday, and had to be cut out of there by firefighters. Here’s more on that from the Associated Press, which rose to the occasion with a “Water-loo?” headline:
Authorities say a man was rescued after a tree that fell during high winds trapped him inside a portable toilet at Gettysburg National Military Park in south-central Pennsylvania.
The Barlow Volunteer Fire Department said on its Facebook page that the crew was called to Little Round Top shortly before 4 p.m. Friday. Assistant Chief Joe Robinson told the York Daily Record that they found a tree atop a vehicle but no one inside, and park rangers then told them the tree had trapped a man in the portable toilet.
Robinson said crews treated it like a car entrapment, cutting away the tree with a chain saw and then cutting the portable toilet open with another saw.
“He was very lucky,” said Robinson, who has been a volunteer firefighter for three decades. “It was a large tree, and it just missed striking him. It could have been very serious.”
The extremely terse description of this in the fire department’s Facebook post is great:
It’s good to know that 158 years after the Battle of Gettysburg, we’re still receiving meaningful after-action reports from that location. And this did lead to s0me very good jokes:
https://twitter.com/CivilWarHumor/status/1388556730003427328
While this could have been unfortunate, no one was actually hurt, so we can laugh about it now. And it’s funny to see that battlefield still in the news, even if the only combatants at the moment are logs, firefighters, and a man trapped in a portable toilet.
[The Associated Press; photo from The Barlow Volunteer Fire Department on Facebook]