{"id":1021074,"date":"2026-08-24T13:58:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T13:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1021074\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T13:58:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T13:58:30","slug":"electrician-trapped-for-hours-in-130-foot-high-sign-had-recorded-final-words-for-wife-and-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1021074\/","title":{"rendered":"Electrician trapped for hours in 130-foot-high sign had recorded ‘final words’ for wife and kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

An electrician who was stranded for more than six hours<\/a> inside a 130-foot-tall sign at an Illinois gas station had recorded a final goodbye to his wife and kids because he was so terrified he wouldn\u2019t make it out alive. <\/p>\n

AJ Gow became trapped inside the swaying, sweltering sign last month after his lift malfunctioned while he was working on it at the station in Wilmington, about an hour southwest of Chicago.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the moment, it was getting hairy. I mean I was getting \u2014 I was genuinely getting scared, and I didn\u2019t know what was going to happen. And yeah, I was freaking out,\u201d he recalled to ABC 7 Chicago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gow flashed a news helicopter a \u201cthumbs up\u201d when he got stuck last month. WLS<\/p>\n

\u201cGod forbid if something were to actually happen \u2013 it was my final words. So essentially a goodbye without saying goodbye,\u201d he said of the messages he recorded for them.<\/p>\n

Gow, who works for a company that services signs, said what started as a routine job on July 23 quickly turned into a potential tragedy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a hot day. There was really no air, so I sent my co-worker down. I said, \u2018Go get me some water and my battery-powered fan,\u2019\u201d Gow told the outlet.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe went down, and on his way back up the lift had an issue and could not make it back,\u201d Gow said.<\/p>\n

While he was not initially concerned, his condition started to deteriorate after about four hours inside of the narrow sign without water. Meanwhile on the ground, efforts to fix the lift repeatedly failed.<\/p>\n

Gow was brought down to safety after more than six hours trapped in the sign. Wilmington Fire Protection District \/ Facebook<\/p>\n

\u201cEventually I started to feel like crap. And I told [my co-worker], you know, call EMS. I said, I don\u2019t care what you have to do, get me down,\u201d Gow said.<\/p>\n

Fire crews rushed to the scene \u2014 but their ladders were only 100 feet tall and unable to reach him.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Eventually, authorities secured another lift from a job site some 17 miles away.<\/p>\n

Feeling reinvigorated as the lift rolled up to the scene by police escort, Gow flashed a thumbs-up to a local news helicopter. The clip and his story immediately went viral.<\/p>\n

Gow recorded final messages for his wife and children after a mechanical failure left him fearing for his life during the six-hour ordeal. Facebook \/ AJ Gow<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not prepared for it to get as much traction as it did,\u201d Gow said. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gow shared on social media after the incident that he was uninjured but suffered from severe dehydration, which required hospitalization. <\/p>\n

Gow, who returned to work fixing electric signs, added that he\u2019s grateful he\u2019s now able to look back at the terrifying situation and \u201claugh at it\u201d \u2014 and will make sure he always stays inside his lift bucket.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An electrician who was stranded for more than six hours inside a 130-foot-tall sign at an Illinois gas…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1021075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,1818,57234,17941,67,132,68,1154,5631],"class_list":["post-1021074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-illinois","tag-rescues","tag-signs","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-us-news","tag-viral-videos"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117150843469206676","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1021075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}