A 600-pound Pennsylvania man was cut from his home by rescuers after calling for help. Neighbors and friends were shocked to see him still alive after learning of the dangers inside his home.
"The police came and knocked all the windows out, but they didn't hear from him," neighbor Lee Hanyo told WPXI-TV. After that, the fire department arrived on scene, as did Hazmat workers because the home was "deemed too toxic to go in for the fire department," Hanyo explained.
Once rescuers were inside, after using chainsaws to cut through the home, the man was placed on a stretcher and hooked up to a pulley system. He was loaded onto a flatbed truck and then an ambulance for the ride to the local hospital.
"It shouldn't have come to that," Hanyo stated. "But at least they got him out."
This man was fortunate rescuers were able to get him out of the home. In Ohio, a morbidly obese man was found fused to his chair, a result of him not moving in two years. According to reports, the man had been fed by his roommates and girlfriend, and sat in his own excrement. Rescuers had to cut the man from the chair, then cut a hole in the house in order to take him to the hospital.
"The living room where the man lived in his chair was filthy, very deplorable. It's unbelievable that somebody lives in conditions like that," Jim Chase, a local city code enforcer told WTRF-TV.
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"I instructed the landlord this morning and the two people, the tenants at the house, they had to get it cleaned. There's no way they can live in something like that, so they are working on it," Chase added.
The Center for Disease Control reports that more than one-third of United States adults are obese and 17 percent of children and adolescents under 20 are obese as well. It is a problem with significant health and societal problems.
"During the past 20 years, there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the U.S., and rates remain high. In 2010, no state had a prevalence of obesity less than 20 percent," reports the CDC.
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