A man was hospitalized after the porta-potty he was using at the historic Gettysburg battlefield was crushed by a tree

• A tree fell in high winds and crushed a porta potty at the Gettysburg battlefield site of Little Round Top.
• A man was inside at the time. First responders cut him out, and he was taken to hospital.

First responders have rescued a man who became imprisoned inside a porta-potty at the site of a historic Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania.

On Friday, volunteer firefighters from the Barlow Volunteer Fire Department responded to a 911 call at Little Round Top to find that a large tree that had toppled in high winds had crushed a car and a portable latrine, The York Daily Record reported.

Volunteers found no one inside the vehicle, the outlet said, but identified that the tree had trapped a man inside the crushed porta-potty, and proceeded to cut him out.

He was taken to Gettysburg Hospital by ambulance with injuries not considered life-threatening.

"Arrived to find one male subject trapped in the porta-potty," Joe Robinson, assistant chief of the Barlow Volunteer Fire Department, wrote on the department's Facebook page.

Robison shared images of the decimated lavatory on Facebook.

"He was very lucky," Robinson told the York Daily Record. "It was a large tree, and it just missed striking him. It could have been very serious."

The firefighters treated the situation as if the man had been trapped in the car, Robinson said. They used a chainsaw to cut away the tree and they cracked the porta-potty open with a machine-powered saw.

"This is definitely something I have never seen before," Robinson added.

During the Battle of Gettysburg, the Little Round Top was the site of an unsuccessful Confederate assault on Union troops.