CARNATION, Wash. — With tears in his eyes, Mark Bunton says he feels fortunate to sit in the hospital bed at Harborview Medical Center. His leg is swollen and bandaged up, his arms bruised, and small cuts scattered over his body as a result of a giant 60-foot-long, five-foot-wide Redwood tree that came crashing down into his home late last Wednesday night.
“What just amazed me is I heard that snap, snap, and I said, ‘God, that’s weird for lightning.’” Bunton recalled, “Then by the time I could process it, it just cut [the roof] open like a little can opener.”
Bunton had been staying at his friend, Dan Thompson’s, camper for the last several months after his wife’s passing. Dan, his wife Pamela, and the other neighbors came running out when the tree came down. They found Mark, or at least Mark from the waist up, with the tree burying his waist and legs. He could move his toes on his right leg, but his left was numb.
“Halfway through it or so I go, ‘I ain’t going to have two legs anymore,’ and I was trying to come to grips with that,” Bunton said.
Other trees that had fallen blocked the main road in and out of the Lake Joy neighborhood that night, sending first responders scrambling to find other ways to get to Mark and begin the rescue. Using lifts, chains, and airbags, they worked for nearly two hours to lift the tree. Mark was making jokes the entire time.
“I just got to think this thing out,” Bunton said. “You just got to take it away from the legs and think it out. Because if you try to compound it, it’s just going to eat you up.”
Bunton was in surgery Sunday to repair the leg that broke under his left knee. He believes God was watching out for him that night.
“If God gave me a chance to get through this in one piece, pretty much, there was a reason. There’s something he wants me to do. Not just for me. For sure, everybody,” added Bunton. “We can all make a difference, no matter how small you might think it is or how big it is.”
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