“Good luck in misfortune” – this is how Michael Diesenreiter from the St. Leonhard fire brigade summarizes the operation to which he and his comrades were called late on Saturday afternoon.
A 44-year-old farmer was driving with his twelve-year-old daughter with his tractor and low-loader from the village of Maasch in the direction of Haid when, for inexplicable reasons, he came to the shoulder and drove down an embankment to the left. His daughter was thrown from the vehicle. “It’s a very steep place, they were very lucky,” says St. Leonhard’s mayor Andreas Derntl in an interview with the OÖ Nachrichten. The farmer was initially trapped in the tractor, but was able to free himself before the fire brigade and rescue services arrived. “It’s always been a queasy feeling when you’re called to an operation where someone is said to be trapped,” says Diesenreiter, who knows that both are fine now and only slightly injured.
Derntl, who is also a farmer, knows about the dangers that farmers are exposed to – especially in the hilly Mühlviertel: “Harvest time is stressful anyway, you try to do a lot when the weather is right, but when it changes – after a long dry and dusty period – the roads are often greasy.” (wm)
Source: Nachrichten
