Containment, was the order of the moment when gallons of diesel began to seep onto the road during the tedious operation to get the MACK Truck removed from the scene of the accident in Betty’s Estate. Photo Today / Milton Pieters
St. Maarten – For retired police officer, Todd Peterson, Wednesday December 9 will be a day he will never forget. It’s the day when a MACK truck weighing in the vicinity of 50,000 pounds (including cargo) left a gaping hole in a wall and came to an abrupt stop after it slammed into his house.
The accident which occurred at the entrance to Poinsetta Road on Betty’s Estate Road caused traffic flowing in both directions to come to an abrupt halt just before the beginning of the normal school rush hour traffic in that area. The brakes of the truck failed. According to a police report.
With the exception of the driver of the truck who was visibly shaken and complained about pain in his hands when this newspaper’s reporter arrived on the scene, no one else was injured. “It felt like a huge explosion or an earthquake, because the noise was simultaneous with the shaking of the house,” Peterson said in an invited comment.
According to Peterson, lately it became a normal practice for the trucks to come down Poinsetta Road on a daily basis, however it was not the first time that an accident of a similar nature occurred there.
“This is the third time, this one is more severe, the last time it was a car that lost control and slammed into the wall,” he stated. Peterson is of the opinion that if the trucks drove off the hill with less weight, a reoccurrence of what transpired can be avoided.
Miraculously, his grandson who was in the lower section of the building with his nanny was not playing in the yard when that truck came crashing into the building. “He would have been killed and anybody who was passing at the same time would have been dead on the spot,” Peterson noted.
While the details of what caused the truck to become uncontrollable prior to the initial impact remain unclear, it took quite some time to remove it from the scene along with the gallons of diesel that seeped onto the road from a hole in the tank.
Big Mack crashes through wall on Poinsetta Road
