Stopped in traffic near the downhill approach to the Tarentum Bridge yesterday morning in Tarentum, John Hohman was roused from his daydreaming by an unusual scene on his right.

Bill Wade, Post-Gazette
The driver of the truck is rescued yesterday afternoon.
Click photo for larger image.

A flatbed tractor-trailer lumbered past him, going about 25 mph, on the sidewalk. Hohman thought the trucker had possibly lost his brakes and was bravely trying to avoid hitting anyone in traffic.

Not far away, standing in the parking lot of Nick Chevrolet Inc., salesman Ed Orendi thought the same thing as he watched the trucker make a sharp right turn from Tarentum Bridge Avenue onto West Seventh Avenue.

The maneuver allowed the truck driver to avoid bridge traffic, but it put him right behind another line of traffic on West Seventh, and with nowhere to turn.

The trucker's eyes, seemingly as big as the steering wheel he clutched, darted back and forth as he encountered another traffic dilemma on West Seventh, Orendi said.

"He was looking around for options," he said.

Before Orendi knew it, the trucker swerved to the right again, this time through the railing of a small bridge over Bull Creek.

The drama played out in just a few seconds at 10:20 a.m. But the trucker's apparent heroics to avoid hitting anyone led to another drama: his careful and methodical rescue from his crushed cab.

It would be another 2 1/2 hours before the trucker was successfully pulled from the wreckage, hoisted in a basket 50 feet to the bridge deck and taken to Allegheny General Hospital. The man, whose name and condition were not immediately released, was not seriously injured, authorities said.

"If what we're hearing proves to be the case, the man would be a hero," said Chief Rich Heuser of Eureka Fire and Rescue, who led the rescue operation.

There's no question in the minds of Hohman and Orendi.

"I think he lost his brakes," Hohman said. "He avoided the cars. I think that was his game plan."

Orendi agreed. "I think he saved this from being a bigger catastrophe than it turned out to be," he said.

The spot where the rig went through the railing onto the creek bank was about 75 feet past the intersection with Bull Creek Road. The truck's cab crashed to creek bank about 50 feet down a steep embankment, still attached to the trailer, stuck in a 45-degree angle with the rear of the trailer hanging over the side of the bridge.

Orendi ran to the bridge and yelled down to the driver. Eventually, he received a call back from the trucker that he was alive but hurt.

"Hang on, they're coming," Orendi told him.

One of the first to arrive on the scene was police Officer Brandon Miller, who stopped a large flatbed truck and helped that trucker attach a heavy chain to the damaged trailer's rear axle to keep it from moving.

Miller and another officer and some municipal workers formed a human chain down the steep hillside to check the trucker's condition.

Using ropes, firefighters and paramedics scrambled down the hill, their eyes on the tarp-covered load, which had shifted during the drop but appeared to remain stable.

The truck was further stabilized and firefighters in the cherry-picker compartment of a snorkel truck lowered down hydraulic tools so emergency workers at the crushed cab could free the pinned driver.

Eventually, a basket secured to a cable strung over a fire-truck ladder and then extended over the bridge was lowered to the rescuers. They carefully placed the driver in it. He was then slowly hoisted to safety to the applause of about 75 onlookers.

Heuser declined to provide details of the driver's injuries or condition but noted that even as rescuers were working to release him, the driver was on a cell phone talking to his boss.

Tarentum police Chief Bill Vakulick said it seemed clear that the trucker was attempting to avoid cars and tried to slow down his rig by driving up onto the sidewalk and into an embankment. The truck's tires dug deep gouges some 75 feet along the road leading to the bridge.

"We believe he ended up where he did to avoid traffic," Vakulick said, noting witnesses said the truck was traveling no more than 25 mph.

The trucker was hauling 40,000 pounds of nickel briquettes used in the steelmaking process to the Allegheny Ludlum mill in Brackenridge.

First Published: April 1, 2004, 5:00 a.m.