An 84-year-old American motorist spent five days lost in a desert after getting lost while driving home.
Henry Morello drank the windscreen washer fluid, used car mats to stay warm and read a car manual from cover to cover to pass the time.
He was finally rescued from the Arizona desert when a walker discovered him. “I just kissed him,” Mr Morello said. “He looked like an angel to me.”
Mr Morello, who was taken to hospital for checks, described his ordeal as he recalled making a wrong turn while driving home on February 7th from a restaurant.
He became stranded while making made a U-turn and ended up in a ditch. His car and mobile phone battery went flat and he tried to walk to safety did not get too far and returned.
As, unknown to him a search began when he failed to return home, he ripped a chrome piece from his car and put it on the roof, hoping someone would see the reflection.
Overnight temperatures the week he was missing fell to between 4 and 7 degrees.
The hikers who found him last Saturday morning were not identified.
Jim Sheehan, a search and rescue leader, said they knew of the missing man. “Nobody ever gave up” in the search, said Mr Sheehan, who was on a search plane when he got a call saying Mr Morello had been found.
Doctors at the hospital in Phoenix where Mr Morello was taken said he arrived in good condition considering what he had been through.
Mr Morello lives on his own but a carer visits daily. His family is in Chicago, but friends in Arizona kept them informed about the search. About 100 volunteers passed out leaflets and searched on the ground for him over four days.
Mr Morello will not be driving by himself for a long time, said Mr Sheehan, who has been friends with him for 15 years.
And Mr Morello said he had learned a lesson the hard way: “I’ll never drive without water,” he said.
AP