A Serious Accident in the Evening
Pam and I were decompressing over Jeopardy (on the TiVo) and getting ready for a late dinner when we heard a crash.
Then we heard another crash. It was, I thought, like thunder, but Pam later described it as a sort of scraping of metal. That would turn out to be the more accurate description. At about 8:10, a white truck came down the Eastern on-ramp to the Granville Bridge. That’s the one that is fed from the hill that starts at the intersection of Hemlock and Broadway and actually crosses 4th Avenue at about a height of 40 feet or so.
It must have been the wet street (it had just rained pretty hard after a week or so of oil and other grime on the bridge). The truck spun out, crashed through the railings (first crash), and went head-first down to the street below (second crash). When we arrived, along with all of the other stoney-faced neighbors and passers-by, it was clear that one passenger was either already dead or nearly dead. We could see his arm, but not his head, hanging out of the truck’s white cab, which was smashed nearly flat against 4th Avenue. The police and fire departments had already arrived (even though it had been no more than 3 or 4 minutes), and eventually pulled that passenger out. The other was covered by a tarp and had not extricated from the truck before we left and walked back home (a mere 500 feet away or so).
It’s been a violent week in the South Granville area. Earlier, on Monday at about 10PM, a policeman shot a chain-wielding guy who had already beaten someone else in the middle of 16th Avenue and Granville. As safe and peaceful we usually find our city (and that has been the case for the majority of the two years we have lived here already), it definitely feels like there has been a strange spike in death and mayhem.
8 Comments to “A Serious Accident in the Evening”
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Maktaaq
Posted: Aug 17th, 2007 at 7:39 am1How creepy! Poor truck guys and person-beaten-by-a-chain.
Hopefully this will be the end of it.
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nancy
Posted: Aug 17th, 2007 at 9:42 am2oh! How horrible!
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West End Bound
Posted: Aug 17th, 2007 at 9:44 am3By the title of the post, I just knew you and Pam were in an accident with the new car … Glad you’re both safe! Sorry for the truck driver, though .…
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MJ Ankenman
Posted: Aug 17th, 2007 at 9:50 am4Scary and sad… when I read your headline in Twitter I rushed to read your blog to make sure you were both ok…whew.… I wish everyone would slow down. Where we are on Pacific there are so many close calls of collissions including with pedestrians. The description of the arm hanging out of the cab iilustrates the point.…slow down …all it can take is a slick spot and its all over. Lucky that they didn’t hit anyone else.
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ddrucker
Posted: Aug 18th, 2007 at 9:32 am5Sorry to give everyone a scare with that title. I should have realized that there would be the Twitter/Facebook echo of just the title.
It was quite grotesque, and we were a bit sick after seeing it, but I guess we also feel a lucky that as new drivers (at least here in BC) we haven’t been involved in anything, serious or otherwise.
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doug r
Posted: Aug 18th, 2007 at 11:53 am6The bridge was built in the 1950’s and some of the ramps have nasty turns which can be super slick after a rainshower, including that Hemlock on-ramp.
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Mark
Posted: Sep 10th, 2007 at 5:47 pm7I was the passenger in the truck. Just for the record we weren’t speeding. The truck hit an oily patch and started to wiggle.
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ddrucker
Posted: Sep 13th, 2007 at 9:46 pm8Glad you could set the record straight. Geez, glad you’re alive! It looked like a horrific accident, and it’s hard to imagine that you made it out in one piece. My wife tried to find out further information about the accident and she is relieved to know you’re OK.
I would have thought that you wouldn’t have any memory of such a trauma, but I guess you do. Hope you didn’t suffer any permanent injury.
