Man badly hurt after getting arm stuck in pasta-making machine

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    SOUTH WINDSOR, Connecticut (WFSB) — A man was airlifted to a hospital early Monday morning after needing to be cut free from a pasta-making machine in South Windsor.

Crews reported shortly after 6:10 a.m. that the worker who became entangled in the machine at Carla’s Pasta had been freed.

“We found a male party with his arm stuck down the machine,” said Deputy Fire Chief Timothy Papp. “It had rotated around kind of like a spinner device inside the machine that’s used to make pasta.”

The victim was take to the hospital. His condition was described as “life-threatening.”

South Windsor police said they received the 911 call from an employee just before 3:30 a.m. Monday. The report said the man’s arm became caught in a pasta machine up to the elbow.

Crews worked for more than 2 hours to free the man.

“The problem was it was a food-grade stainless steel, so it’s very difficult to cut, so we used every cutting device that we had on our rescue,” Papp said.

Rescuers said the victim showed a lot of bravery.

“He was actually speaking with us the whole time and he was actually very helpful with us, the few times trying to remove him and get him unstuck,” Papp said. “He was able to tell us what was stuck, how his arm was stuck [and] what we could do to get him out of there.”

The extent of the worker’s injuries were described as severe.

Mutual aid was called in from the South Windsor Public Works Department, along with the East Hartford and Broad Brook fire departments, to provide additional cutting tools to aid in the rescue, police said.

A Life Star emergency helicopter was also at the scene to transport the victim once he was freed. It airlifted the man just after 6:20 a.m.

“I know that he took some injuries to his chest, to his arm and to his face and to his head,” Papp said. “For while he was in there.”

Employees said the man may have been inspecting the machine before he was hurt.

The section of the warehouse where the apparent accident took place will remain closed while investigators try to figure out how it happened.

“They’ve been advised that that area, they have to wait until [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] comes to do an investigation and then the cleanup,” Papp said.

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