A routine repair job turned terrifying when Illinois electrician A.J. Gow became trapped inside a 130-foot-high gas station sign for more than six hours.
The ordeal, which took place on July 21, left him without water or a fan as the summer heat intensified, eventually prompting him to record goodbye messages for his wife and children as he feared the worst.
One netizen reacted to the news, “Next time I see a super tall, lighted sign, I’ll feel great respect for the men who keep these signs working…”
A routine repair quickly turned into a terrifying six-hour ordeal after a mechanical failure left A.J. Gow stranded
A.J. Gow was servicing a massive sign at the Petro Travel Center off Lorenzo Road and Interstate 55 in Wilmington, Illinois.
He was working inside the hollow structure with a co-worker when the intense heat became difficult to tolerate.
With little to no airflow inside, Gow asked his co-worker to head back down in the telescopic boom lift to get him fresh water and a battery-powered fan.
But the lift malfunctioned as his co-worker tried to return.
That left Gow stranded inside the sign, unable to climb down because the structure had no interior ladder and offered no safe way out.
At first, he said he was not overly concerned.
He and his co-worker spent several hours trying to troubleshoot the mechanical problem, expecting to get the lift working again.
The trapped electrician feared he might not make it home to his wife and children
By around 2 p.m., however, Gow had already spent roughly four hours inside the unventilated structure without water.
“Eventually I started to feel like cr*p. And I told him, you know, call EMS. I said, I don’t care what you have to do, get me down,” Gow exclusively told ABC7 Chicago.
He added, “In the moment, it was getting hairy. I mean I was getting – I was genuinely getting scared, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. And yeah, I was freaking out.”
Emergency crews had already arrived, but rescuing him was far from straightforward.
The sign stood more than 130 feet above the ground, while the Wilmington Fire Protection District’s ladders could only reach about 100 feet.
With no immediate rescue route available, the trapped electrician began contemplating the possibility that something could go seriously wrong.
He took out his phone and recorded messages for his wife and children.
He recalled in an interview, “It was my final words. So essentially, a goodbye without saying goodbye…”
“God forbid if something were to actually happen – it was my final words. So essentially a goodbye without saying goodbye,” he explained.
The emotional detail later became one of the most heartbreaking parts of his account, as he had no idea how long he would remain trapped or whether the rescue effort would succeed.
With the department’s own equipment unable to reach Gow, rescuers began searching for machinery tall enough to reach the sign.
Eventually, they located a different lift at a nearby job site in Joliet.
Illinois State Police helped transport the equipment to the scene, allowing rescuers to get the much taller lift into position as quickly as possible.
Gow later recalled seeing the rescue equipment arrive and gave a thumbs-up from inside the sign.
ABC7 Chicago also captured aerial footage of the moment, which later spread widely online.
The terrifying ordeal changed how Gow now approaches high-altitude electrical jobs
After more than six hours inside the structure, Gow finally got into the replacement lift and returned safely to the ground.
Despite the frightening circumstances, he was ultimately safe and uninjured.
“I was not prepared for it to get as much traction as it did,” Gow said of the attention surrounding the ordeal.
“I had no idea that I was going to be stuck up here for that long, or was going to be anywhere near that kind of scenario.”
A month after the ordeal, Gow said he feels “so fortunate that it turned out the way that it did and I’m able to look back in hindsight and laugh at it.”
But the experience has also changed how he approaches his work.
He has already returned to servicing signs high above the ground.
This time, however, he plans to remain inside the safety of the lift bucket while working at extreme heights.
That way, if another mechanical failure occurs, he will not be left stranded inside a sign with no way to get back down.
“I’m amazed they didn’t call 911 sooner and get an adequately-sized lift to get him down. Quite strange…” one netizen wrote
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