“Miracle” on an American highway: one man was found alive on Tuesday, since he remained trapped inside his car for a week, under a bridge, managing to survive thanks to rainwater, until two fishermen chanced upon the wreckage.

The two men were waiting for fish to bite in an Indiana river near Chicago when they spotted an object shimmering where the water flows under a bridge on Highway 94, a major thoroughfare connecting the Great Lakes region with the plains of the northern US. When they approached, they saw a young man trapped in the driver’s seat, pinned behind the deployed airbag.

“The moment I touched his shoulder, he turned his head, woke up. He was alive and happy to see us,” said one of the men, Mario Garcia, who had gone fishing with his son-in-law. “I’ve never seen anyone so relieved,” he added at a press conference.

They immediately notified the authorities and the rescue crews managed to retrieve the 27-year-old man with difficulty. The footage released by the police shows the wreckage of the vehicle, on the slope, between the river and the base of the bridge.

After being extricated, the driver was taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital. He has serious injuries and is not out of danger, Indiana State Police Chief Glenn Fifield said.

“It’s a miracle that this gentleman is alive today and that these two gentlemen went to the creek,” he added.

For reasons that have not yet been clarified, the 27-year-old’s semi-truck was found off the highway under the bridge. From the roadway of the bridge it was almost impossible to see the wreckage.

The young man told his rescuers that he had been trapped inside the vehicle since last Wednesday and could not reach his mobile phone. “He said he was yelling, screaming but no one was listening.”

He probably owed his salvation to the mild weather conditions that prevailed in the area these days, but on the night of Tuesday into Wednesday the temperature was expected to plummet and “without a doubt he would not last another day”, said Mario Garcia.