An electrician has revealed how he left goodbye messages to his wife and children after getting stuck inside a sign 130ft in the air.

AJ Gow was working inside the truck stop sign in Wilmington, Illinois, in July when his telescopic boom lift stopped working.

Speaking a month after his ordeal, he said: ‘It was a hot day. There was really no air, so I sent my co-worker down. I said: “Go get me some water any my battery-powered fan”.

‘He went down, and on his way back up, the lift had an issue and could not make it back.’

By 2pm – with temperatures rising to 30°C – his colleague had not been able to fix the lift and, temperatures inside the sign rising and four hours without water, he started to become concerned.

AJ told WABC news: ‘Eventually I started to feel like crap. And I told him, you know, call EMS. I said, I don’t care what you have to do, get me down.

‘In the moment, it was getting hairy … I was genuinely getting scared, and I didn’t know what was going to happen. And yeah, I was freaking out.’

That was when he started recording messages for his family.

AJ said: ‘God forbid if something were to actually happen — it was my final words. So essentially a goodbye without saying goodbye.’

When the local fire department arrived, it was quickly realised that the rescue was going to be more complex than originally anticipated.

Their ladders only reached a height of 100 feet and with no ladder in the sign, AJ had to wait for a ladder lift to arrive from Joliet, a city 17 miles away on the edge of Chicago.

That lift was so big that it needed a police escort to get it to the site.

At the time of the incident Deputy chief for Wilmington Fire, Todd Friddle told People: ‘Although unconventional means were used to effect the rescue due to circumstances, everyone went home safe and uninjured yesterday.’

AJ added that he was surprised by how much attention his time in the sign gained after making headlines around the world.

He said: ‘I’m so fortunate that it turned out the way that it did and I’m able to look back in hindsight and laugh at it.’

He has already returned to work but says that from now on he’ll stay in the lift bucket.

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