 
|
|||||||||||||
              
|
Car falls from 7th floor to street; driver suffers only minor injuries A miracle on Liberty Avenue Thursday, April 15, 1999 By Johnna A. Pro and Jonathan D. Silver, Post-Gazette Staff Writers
A Steubenville, Ohio, woman whose car plunged 70 feet from a Downtown parking garage suffered only minor injuries and is in fair condition at Allegheny General Hospital.
Amy Lynn Johnson, 30, was treated yesterday for facial cuts and a fractured left hand in the fall that occurred after her car jumped forward in the old Gimbels parking garage.
The 1980 Buick Century lurched through a thin steel barrier and became airborne, tumbling from the seventh floor toward the lunchtime crowds on Liberty Avenue below.
No one on the ground was injured.
"It was unbelievable, like a movie stunt," said Chris Curto, 35, of East Hills, who had just come out of a restaurant down the street.
Johnson, a single mother of two children who attends classes at the Western School of Health and Business Careers, declined requests for an interview.
A woman who answered the phone in her hospital room last night and who identified herself as a relative said Johnson "was doing fine but did not wish to rehash the accident."
Johnson told Pittsburgh police that she believed the brakes on the car failed as she pulled into the seventh floor parking space of the garage at the corner of Liberty Avenue and Ninth Street, according to Cmdr. William Valenta of the Hill District Station.
Valenta said the car was taken to the city's auto pound and that the accident investigation squad would conduct a full investigation.
As Johnson pulled into the space, the car rolled over an 8-inch-tall concrete parking bumper. At that point, the only thing between Johnson and the ground was a waist-high steel panel, a little more than a quarter-inch thick, secured to the parking garage wall by four bolts.
The bolts didn't hold, and the car tumbled over the garage's edge.
"It just came flying out and hit the ground with such force that parts were flying everywhere," said Michelle Bemeal, who was walking to a luncheon baby shower being held at the Seventh Street Grill.
"You can't imagine the deafening noise. Even though I saw it, I couldn't believe what I saw," said Bemeal, echoing the descriptions of others who witnessed the accident from the ground below and the garage above.
A driver who was behind Johnson's car in the garage, and who was interviewed by police, said he could do little but watch helplessly and in horror as Johnson's car crashed through the barricade. He dialed 911 from his car phone.
"I pictured all these people below getting crushed like little ants," he said.
Emergency workers at the scene said they were amazed to find Johnson conscious and semialert inside the crumpled car with no obvious wounds beyond cuts on her head and neck.
"She really didn't remember what happened to her. She said she thought she slipped off the brake," said Mark Pinchalk, crew chief of Medic 14. "I told her she came off the parking garage, and she didn't believe that happened to her."
Other witnesses on the street reported watching the plummeting hunk of metal twist in the air and plow into a lamppost at the entrance to the garage on Ninth Street, bending the post more than 90 degrees.
Linda Barner, 26, of Monongahela, was enjoying a cigarette with friends at Monte Cello's Pizza on Liberty Avenue when she gaped at the sight.
"I said, 'Oh my God, a car just came flying out of the garage.' Nobody believed me," Barner said.
The sand-colored car narrowly missed a city bus rumbling by and a car pulling into the garage before it hurled into the street with the jarring burst of a head-on collision.
"The bus was going past and you could see a part of the car coming down," said Tyrone Jennings, 33, of East Liberty, who was looking out the window of Sammy's Famous Corned Beef, where he works, across the street from the garage. "It just missed it by, I'd say, about a car length."
Johnson's car bounced several times before landing on its driver's side, the passenger-side tires sticking into the air and the bottom of the chassis facing the garage entrance. Shattered glass sprinkled the street with a crunchy carpet.
Less than a minute after the 11:53 a.m. accident, emergency workers were racing to the scene. When they arrived, passers-by were already helping out, trying to reach Johnson and scurrying for ice.
Ambulances, a fire truck and police cars choked the avenue, blocking traffic for about an hour, turning the street into a stream of roving blue-and-yellow jackets.
Pinchalk was headed to get some equipment repaired when the call came in. He decided to respond since he was so close, swinging over to the garage from Tenth Street and Fort Duquesne Boulevard.
About a half-dozen emergency workers swarmed the car, working frantically to free Johnson. They were first able to reach her through the front of the car, where the windshield had fallen out.
First they tried to assess her condition, checking her pulse and making sure her airways were clear. Then they hooked up an intravenous line, fitted her with a cervical collar and administered oxygen.
Maneuvering space was tight, however.
"The way the car was smashed, there wasn't a real good way to access her," Pinchalk said.
Rescue workers finally resorted to cutting off the car's roof with an air chisel. At 12:10 p.m., they hauled Johnson out, her blue jeans, red shirt, white jacket and tennis shoes becoming visible to the handful of observers on the garage roof and the several hundred people ringing the accident scene from behind yellow police tape.
The crowd clapped. Fluid leaked from the front of the car.
Paramedics first placed Johnson on an orange backboard and then on a gurney before wheeling her into an emergency vehicle marked Rescue 4. Her eyes were covered with thick wads of gauze.
Ralph Horgan, executive director of the Pittsburgh Parking Authority, which owns the garage, said he hadn't heard of anything similar happening in the city's history.
"We're very thankful that this woman is still alive," Horgan said as he inspected the scene.
City garages are inspected annually, and Horgan said last year's inspection in either August or September did not turn up any safety problems with the metal barriers or the bolts fastening them. The eight-level garage was built in 1965, and Horgan estimated that it holds about 630 vehicles.
"You can't fail-safe anything, and in an extreme event, anything can happen," Horgan said. "We're very conscious of safety issues. This is just an extreme event. Once in 35 years [of the garage's history], I'd say, is extreme. ...We always thought that this was safe, designed safely and constructed safely."
Now, Horgan said, the parking authority will inspect the garage in light of the accident and re-evaluate whether any safety modifications are needed.
Wasinder Mokha, director of engineering for the parking authority, said the 3-foot-tall steel plates that cover portions of the parking garage's wall were not made to withstand the force of a moving car.
"It's not supposed to stop a car going pretty fast," Mokha said.
Mokha also said a car must be moving fairly quickly to roll over the concrete parking barriers, but he could not estimate what kind of speed would be necessary to do so.
|
||||||||||||
