Man recovers after power line break, fire
OKLAHOMA CITY — Otis Riley’s wife, Linda, has not been to the building or the burns that mark the place where a live electrical power line broke free Thursday morning and hit the lift where Otis stood working.
The electrical current coursed through his body.
“He said it caught the lift on fire. He’d seen it burning and he said, well, all at once he just hit the down button,” Linda said.
Otis may very well have saved his life through that one action.
He ended up in the hospital with second and third-degree burns on much of his body.
“This could have killed my husband,” Linda said.
She, her son, daughter and other extended members of the family gathered at the hospital Thursday night to help Otis begin his road to recovery.
“It hurts to see the toughest man you have ever known in your life be hurt by that,” Otis’s only son said, a man who shares his name.
The family said, at the time, Otis was wearing a beloved leather jacket, a jacket that also had burns and melted metal from the fire.
The family plans to save it as a reminder of how miraculous it is that Otis survived at all.
“Even his fingernails are burnt. His neck is burnt, his face is swollen, his eyebrows, his hair, even his head; it was all singed,” daughter Marie said.
