Here's the description of how he survived. It's long. Somewhere around 4:10 or so they start describing how he survived. Video of him climbing out of the engine is around 3:00 or so.
Yeah, his protective head gear and goggles saved his bacon. Most of those will FOD the engine out to an RPM that is too low. This video shows the engine belching flame as the indicator of it injesting those objects.
Where I work this is a real danger and Ive seen people loose their breath and almost pass out from being too close to running engines and saw one person blown 30' because she walked behind a running CFM56 on a 737. She left in an ambulance.