A bad situation could have been much worse for a man who sought shelter in a dumpster, then found himself tumbling into the hopper of a garbage truck.
The unwitting passenger had taken refuge in a receptacle behind the In-N-Out Burger on County Center Drive, according to Santa Rosa fire officials, who said the unidentified man was one garbage stop away from being pressed, possibly to death, in the back of the refuse-filled truck.
"It's very likely a person ending up in a garbage truck that goes through a number of compaction cycles, likely wouldn't have survived," Santa Rosa fire Battalion Chief Mark Basque said.
Upon arrival at his next stop Friday, at the VCA PetCare hospital on Mendocino Avenue, the driver of the front-loading Recology Sonoma Marin truck heard shouts of distress, then found an injured man trying to climb out of the back of the truck.