Driver Pinned When Boom Truck Tips Over
Published in: The Sun (Yuma, Ariz.)
Date: 3/17/2007
By: James Gilbert
Firefighters and rescue personnel worked for about two hours Friday morning to remove an unidentified elderly man injured when his boom truck crane tipped over, pinning him inside.
The accident occurred around 11 a.m. in the 12600 block of South Frontage Road in the Foothills. The truck was parked next to a chain-link fence between the Adobe Square Shopping Center and the Cactus World Nursery.
“Initially the call went out as an injured person,” said Rural/Metro spokesman David Padilla. “But when the first engine got on scene, it was changed to an extrication.”
Padilla said when the boom truck tipped over — on its driver side and amidst a row of cactus — the driver was pinned between the truck’s cab and frame.
The truck was eventually stabilized using wooden blocks and air bags and lifted just enough by a tow truck that had been called to the scene to remove the driver.
“He was conscious, alert and talking to us,” Padilla said of the victim.
The injured man was airlifted to Yuma Regional Medical Center by a Silver State helicopter ambulance that had landed in the parking lot of Mickey B’s, 12635 S. Frontage Road.
Teri Parchman of Sheer Magic Beauty, which is just down the street, was outside the salon watering the plants and saw what happened.
“It wasn’t doing anything at the time. All of the sudden it was going over,” Parchman said. “I was watching it and it still made me jump. It made a really big boom.”
Padilla said he did not know what type of job the boom truck was supposed to do, but the tow truck was going to turn it upright and remove it from the scene.