A Kingston man appears to have escaped serious injury after becoming trapped under a 2,500-pound tractor when it rolled over onto him Saturday.

Firefighters used a variety of rescue tools to free the man, and believe he may have been protected by the thick vegetation that filled the roadside ditch where the man and the tractor landed.

North Kitsap Fire & Rescue crews were called to Leyman Lane at 11:46 a.m. after the man used his cell phone to call 9-1-1.

The first unit arrived within four minutes, and crews freed the man just 10 minutes after that.

The same conditions that cushioned the man complicated the rescue; working in the vegetation-filled ditch 6 feet below the road surface, firefighters used ratchet straps secured to the fire engine to stabilize the tractor and gradually raised it off the man using a specialized jack, slipping step chocks underneath as space was created.

The man declined medical treatment. He told crews he’d been operating the tractor along the side of the road when the shoulder gave way.