Troy Hall, 32, has shared his amazing story of recovery after being badly burned in two massive electric shocks in 2011. Photo / George Novak
Troy Hall, 32, has shared his amazing story of recovery after being badly burned in two massive electric shocks in 2011. Photo / George Novak
Advisory: Article contains image that may be confronting for some people.
The first electric shock killed him. The second brought him back.
Well, that's what he's been told.
Nearly a decade on from Troy Hall's brush with fiery death in a cherry picker near a high-voltage power line on aBay of Plenty avocado orchard, his life is being renewed again.
Hall doesn't remember much of the accident on October 14, 2011.
Over the last year, however, the Tauranga 32-year-old learned more about his story as he worked to overcome the mental scars it left him with, and embrace the life he's grateful to have.
He was on a hydra-ladder picking avocados. His father, John Paul Hall, was nearby on another ladder. The 110,000 kilovolt powerlines were about 4.5m away, running through the green orchard rows of the Matapihi Peninsula, near Mount Maunganui.
"I had a phone to my ear ... telling my partner at the time we'd finished up for the day," Hall said.
"I remember coming out of the tree and just blacking out. That was the first electrocution. It hit my head and went through my body."
The charge had "jumped" to him through the rain - a flashover.
The next shock went through his chest.
"The first one killed me, the second one brought me back. But it lit me up in flames.
"Dad was boosting towards me to try to get me off but as soon as he touched the ladder with his, because they were both arced to the ground, it blew him back.
"I was dangling up in the air in the cage for about 15 minutes, apparently."
Once out of the cage he was laid on the ground to cool down. "My body had melted."
A report in the next day's Bay of Plenty Times quoted a first responder who described Hall's clothes as having been "burned off" by fire, and a neighbour who heard "two big booms".
A story about Troy Hall's accident ran on the front page of the Bay of Plenty Times the next day. Graphic / NZME
Hall has a few vague memories of those critical minutes. He was blind but could hear everything. He recalls trying to get up and his dad telling him: "Stay on the ground, boy".
The last thing he remembered was paramedics putting him in an induced coma. His body was swelling up - up to five times its normal size, he was told - and going into shock.
"I woke up weeks later in hospital."
He had been airlifted to Middlemore, where he spent the painful first few months of his recovery in a specialist burns unit.
He required skin grafts to about 60 per cent of his skin on his torso, neck and arms, as well as part of his leg.
He lost his right ear and his sight in his left eye, and nearly lost his right arm.
"My muscle was getting eaten from the inside out for a week, like a microwave, they reckon. They were cutting, cutting, cutting."
His weight dropped to a frail 30kg.
Hall remembered little but pain and morphine, but his dad recorded each step in a journal Hall has recently started to read.
He was transferred to Waikato Hospital early in the new year.
When he was ready to go home, he moved to near Wellington to be with family.
In an effort to "be the same old me" he initially slipped back into some habits from his old lifestyle of drugs, gangs and alcohol, but eventually managed to start drawing himself away.
Troy Hall during his recovery and a recent selfie at the gym. Photos / Supplied
About a year after the accident, the company he was working for that day, Avo-Plus, pleaded guilty to health and safety charges and was fined $10,000, as well as ordered to pay Hall $75,000.
At the sentencing, the judge said it would be a "miracle" if Hall was ever able to work again.
Hall met a woman and they had a baby girl, Nevaeh, now 6.
They moved to the Bay of Plenty and Hall used money from an ACC payout to start his business, TJ Harvesting, in 2014 with three machines.
His dad overcame his reluctance to ever go up in a hydra again to join him.
Troy Hall used his ACC payout to start his avocado picking and orchard development business, TJ Harvesting. Photo / George Novak
For the first couple of years of the business Hall could barely move, let alone pick fruit.
Now, he has been up in the hydra every day, keeping the business going as best he can through the Covid-19 crisis.
While the business endured, the relationship ended, something Hall put, in part, down to the mental struggle he was going through.
He had anxiety and felt incredibly self-conscious about his body, on top of "unbearable" physical pain.
He felt angry when people stared and would think: "Yes, I know I'm ugly, stop looking though."
The year following the break-up was the hardest, he said, but it was also when he decided to change.
"I ended up just telling myself, 'You have to get over this, you can't let this s*** hold you back forever'."
Getting involved with the charitable trust, Burns Support Group, a couple of years ago and attending its camps as a mentor has strengthened his resolve to be grateful.
"Being around the kids and people a hell of a lot worse off than me, physically and visually ... they're such strong, positive, happy people and it's just inspiring. I'd bloody take a bullet for them."
He began meditating, working out and eating well every day, listening to podcasts and surrounding himself with positive, driven family and friends. He wants to thank them all for their support.
His big dream is to grow the business enough to secure a future for himself and his daughter, then start working on charitable endeavours for other burns survivors.
His physical recovery has also continued. He is waiting for ACC to sign off on a "click-on click off" magnetically attached prosthetic ear to replace his glue-on one, and was considering surgery on the tight skin of his armpits to give him a wider range of motion.
On June 2, he's due to make his television debut, sharing his story for new TV One show, Unbreakable, which will screen on Tuesdays at 8.30pm.
Hall said his anxiety had not gone away, but he had ways to manage it.
"I'm choosing to fight it nowadays, rather than be afraid of it."
