A homeless man who hopped into a trash bin to escape rain and fell asleep there woke up screaming after sanitation workers in West Palm Beach dumped his bin into the truck and started the compacter. However, despite being compressed several times the man managed to survive the pressure from the trash compactor.
"I screamed one last breath," Robert Baswell, 44, told the Palm Beach Post, adding that he once tried to cushion himself from the pressure of the compressor with a dead opossum.
Baswell was rescued after a trash collector climbed into the truck to remove debris and discovered him.
Firefighters were called to the scene and were able to pull Baswell out of the trash after nearly half an hour.
Baswell, who suffered broken legs and ribs in the incident, feels lucky to have survived.
"I'm so happy to be here, as bad as I'm hurt," he said.
A standard trash compacter can exert several thousand pounds of pressure per square inch.
