Todd Palin, husband of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, suffered eight fractured ribs in a snowmachine accident Sunday night, his father told The Associated Press.
Sarah Palin returned to Alaska on Monday from Florida, where she was on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, whom she has endorsed for the GOP presidential nomination. She thanked people for their prayers and concerns on her Facebook page, in a post late Monday cataloging Todd's injuries.
"Todd Palin is in intensive care at an Alaskan hospital with injuries including multiple broken and fractured ribs, broken shoulder blade, broken clavicle, knee/leg injuries; and a collapsed lung," Palin wrote. "He is presently back in surgery to repair multiple fractures."
Trump's campaign announced Monday that Todd Palin had been "in a bad snowmachine accident" Sunday night. The crash occurred in the Petersville area, north of the Palins' hometown of Wasilla up the Parks Highway.
Todd Palin's father, Jim Palin, told the AP that his son also suffered injuries to his collarbone and lungs, and was scheduled for surgery Monday at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in Palmer.
Asked about Sunday's crash, Matanuska-Susitna Borough spokeswoman Patty Sullivan said medics received a report of a single-snowmachine crash at about 8 p.m. They responded to Cubby's Marketplace on the Parks Highway, just south of Talkeetna Spur Road, where the patient -- whose name wasn't being released by the borough, due to patient-confidentiality laws -- was taken after the initial crash.
"(W)e can only confirm that borough responders arrived at a snowmobile accident in the Talkeetna area to help a rider with serious injuries," Sullivan wrote in an email Monday. "The person was transported to Mat-Su Medical Center."
A Trump campaign event in The Villages, Florida, featuring Sarah Palin was canceled at the last minute Monday. The campaign said in a statement afterward that the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate was returning home to be with her husband, and "looks forward to being back on the campaign trail soon."
However, she appeared with Trump at a rally later Monday in Tampa.
"My husband was out snowmachining. ... (He had) a little wreck on a snowmachine ... a big wreck," she told the crowd in Tampa.
In the 2008 Iron Dog, Todd Palin broke his arm in a high-speed crash, thrown roughly 70 feet when his snowmachine hit a barrel hidden by snow. But he and his former snowmachine racing partner Scott Davis still finished in fourth place.
Sarah Palin was optimistic on her husband's recovery in her Facebook post Monday night.
"Knowing Todd, once he's cognizant, he'll probably ask docs to duct tape him up and he'll call it good," Palin wrote. "He's tough."
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.