Handicapped man on ATV rescued from bog

DOVER-FOXCROFT – A handicapped Clinton man found himself in a precarious situation Wednesday when the all-terrain vehicle he was driving became mired in a bog on a local trail.

David Foss, 43, who lost a leg in a work-related accident, was traveling alone. When Foss found he could not move his vehicle or leave it to get to dry land safely, he used the cellular telephone he carried to summon help.

“It was a little unusual,” Warden Dan Carroll of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife said of the call Wednesday. “His ATV basically got sucked down in the mud.”

When Foss found he was unable to free the all-terrain vehicle from the water and mud and realized that with his handicap he might have difficulty getting out of the bog water, he called the Piscataquis County Sheriff’s Department. The call, which was made at about 10:30 a.m., was passed on to Carroll and Dover-Foxcroft firefighters. Mayo Regional Hospital ambulance personal also responded to the call.

After reaching the scene by the trail, which is an abandoned rail bed, the firefighters waded into the bog, which is about 3 feet deep at the deepest point, and assisted Foss to shore, according to Carroll.

The firefighters also towed Foss’ four-wheel vehicle from the bog, but the ATV was waterlogged and would not start.

Foss was taken to Dover-Foxcroft, where he made a telephone call to his wife, Donna, to pick him up. He returned later in the day to retrieve the vehicle, the warden said.

“It was unusual in the fact he had some physical limitations, but he probably used good judgment in not trying to do something by himself,” Carroll said. The fact that Foss carried a telephone helped the situation, he noted. “If he hadn’t had the cellphone, would he have had the patience to wait until someone else came along?” he wondered.

Foss was unavailable Wednesday for comment.

Reached by telephone, Donna Foss said her husband usually traveled with someone else when he rode the trails, but had gone alone on this trip. She said he was not hurt in the incident, but noted that “he didn’t say much” when she picked him up.