A 28-year-old fisherman who was nearly crushed to death beneath a massive boulder on an Oregon jetty survived by using his Bluetooth earbuds to activate Siri and call 911, according to his family.
Joe Little had been fishing alone in the morning at the Hammond Marina jetty in Astoria, Oregon, on Saturday when a rock shifted and left him in what his family described as a life-or-death situation. The New York Post first reported the account of his rescue.
His grandmother, Kelly Simonson, recounted what Little told her about the moment the boulder came loose. “He said that he felt it start to move and he put his feet down to stop it, but the boulder was huge, and he slipped down and it just went over him,” Simonson said.
Trapped beneath the rock and lying below the high tide line, Little understood that he had to reach help quickly or risk drowning as the water rose. His Bluetooth earbuds were still connected to his phone, and he was able to trigger the Apple virtual assistant to place the call, reaching 911 at roughly 7 a.m., according to his mother, Mindy.
A Horn, a Drone, and a Helicopter
Warrenton Police Department Sgt. Dylan McCoy said officers worked with a dispatcher to pinpoint Little’s location by honking their vehicle horns while the dispatcher asked him whether the sound was growing closer. Once they had a rough idea of where he was, police launched a drone and located him pinned under the boulder, with only his upper body and feet visible.
Firefighters then had to work carefully to shift the rock without causing further injury. “They removed some of the smaller ones and that allowed them to move him from underneath the extremely large boulder which had trapped him,” McCoy said.
First responders ultimately determined that the terrain was too dangerous to carry Little out on foot, so they called in the U.S. Coast Guard. A Coast Guard helicopter flew to the scene and hoisted him aboard in a gurney.
Little is now recovering at a hospital in Portland, where he is being treated for severe facial injuries, including a broken jaw.
His mother described the extent of the damage in stark terms. “His face got smashed. He’s almost unrecognizable,” Mindy said. “It’s a miracle that my son is alive.”
Little faces an eight-hour facial reconstruction surgery as part of his recovery, and his family said he feels fortunate to have survived at all.
An Unlikely Chain of Events
The rescue hinged on a string of circumstances that lined up in Little’s favor: earbuds that remained paired to a phone within range, a voice assistant that could be summoned hands-free while he was pinned, and a dispatcher who thought to use a simple car horn to narrow the search.
The outcome also reflected a multi-agency response that escalated from local police to firefighters to federal air support as crews recognized the limits of what they could safely do on the ground.
Little had set out fishing alone that morning, a routine outing on a stretch of jetty where shifting rock and rising tides are part of the landscape. Neither the Warrenton Police Department nor the U.S. Coast Guard immediately released additional details beyond what local officials and family members described.
As he awaits reconstructive surgery, Little’s relatives are focused on what they consider the most important fact of the day: that a call went through in time.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/10/01/fisherman-trapped-under-huge-boulder-saved-after-getting-siri-to-call-911/