Boeing worker recalls “horrible pain” while trapped under 787 landing gear

A 30-year-old Boeing employee who lost both legs below the knees after he was trapped by the landing gear of a 787 jet says he doesn’t know how it happened but recalls “just horrible pain.”

“When I was trapped underneath there I remember breaking my femur while I was trapped, and that didn’t hurt at all because of how much pain was in my feet,” Josh Divers of Everett told KING 5.

Divers spoke to reporters Wednesday as he left Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. With him were his father, Del Divers of Arlington, and his mother, Linda Lewis of Gresham, Ore.

“The first day we hear Josh is probably going to have his legs amputated, and you’re going, ‘Oh no.’ And then a day later, they’re saying, ‘Well we cut them off here,’ and you’re saying, ‘Oh yeah, we saved the knees!’ said his father.

The injured man recalls shouting updates to his rescuers at Paine Field like, “My hips are trapped” and “My femur just broke.” That way, he says, they knew what was going on, “and I had a release of pain just by yelling.”

Divers faces months of rehabilitation. Dr. Janna Friedly of the hospital’s rehab unit says learning to walk with prosthetic limbs on both sides is “really like walking on stilts.”

The young man says Boeing has given him and his family all the support they’ve needed, and he’d love to work for the company again someday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.