Overview

• Harvard Fire Protection District crews were dispatched at 2:47 p.m. July 20 to a remote creek at Bunker Hill and Island roads in unincorporated Harvard, Illinois, where a tractor had flipped into water.
• With no paved access, firefighters transported chains, a front loader and other equipment over more than a mile of unpaved, rough terrain using pickup trucks and all‐wheel‐drive utility vehicles.
• Rescue teams used chains and the front loader to lift the overturned tractor and free the man within 25 minutes of arriving on scene.
• The elderly driver, believed to have been trapped underwater for nearly three hours, suffered critical injuries and was airlifted by University of Wisconsin Health Med Flight.
• As of the evening of July 20, he remains in critical condition at OSF St. Anthony Medical Center.