Truck Crashes 100ft Into Gully
The driver of an articulated truck escaped with minor injuries when the truck left Evans Pass road about 5.30 p.m. yesterday and plunged 100 feet down the steep hillside into a gully about 200 yards below the hairpin bend on the Sumner side of the pass.
Desmond Ernest Le Gros, of 53 Vardon crescent, the driver and sole occupant of the truck, jumped from the cab. The cab and front unit of the truck were wreckedMr Le Gros, who suffered head and leg injuries and lost a considerable amount of blood from cuts, was seen climbing back to the road by a passing motorist, who set off with him for the Christchurch Hospital. But the car broke down in Ferry road, and Mr Le Gros was taken the remainder of the way to the hospital by another motorist. After treatment at the hospital, he was allowed to go home. In the meantime, police and St. John ambulance men called to the scene of the accident were searching the hillside and the truck wreckage for injured persons. Constable W. A. Crombie, of Sumner, and Mr D. Diggs, an ambulance driver, found blood on bales of printing paper which had been thrown from the truck as it rolled down the hill. They found a pair of shoes and a boot in the cab.
The cab was squashed flat, and, even when informed
that the driver had been taken to hospital, the police, ambulance men, and traffic officers continued the search, thinking that two persons might have been in the truck. They were satisfied, after 90 minutes, that no injured persons were still at the scene. The driver later confirmed he was the sole occupant. The truck will be pulled from the gully this morning, and it may be necessary to block Evans Pass road to traffic for a short time.
It was the third bad accident on Evans Pass road in five days. On Thursday night, four teen-agers were injured, two seriously, when a car rolled 500 ft from Godley Head road on to Evans Pass road. On Sunday, a youth on a racing cycle suffered serious head injuries when he hit a bank on the road.
Truck Crashes 100ft Into Gully
Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30724, 13 April 1965, Page 1
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