Lucky break?
Moving trip goes wrong Monday for Boise man and friend
By Larry Meyer
Argus Observer
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 10:57 AM PDT
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| Eric Bennett (left) and Russell Ruby, discuss their accident earlier in the day Monday that left pieces of a power pole sticking out of the windshield of Bennett’s pickup. The pair was headed for Roseburg when the incident happened west of Vale on U.S. Highway 20-26. No one was seriously injured. |
VALE — An attempt to help a friend move went awry Monday morning after a vehicle mishap near Vale knocked out power and left the remnants of a power pole jutting from the window of a pickup.
Russell Ruby, 62, Corvallis, flew to Boise to help his friend, Erik Bennett, 40, Boise, move to Roseburg.
Bennett and Ruby set out early Monday in a U-Haul truck and traveled west on U.S. Highway 20-26 toward the Oregon Department of Transportation weigh station, east of Vale. That’s when Ruby said he nodded off to sleep. He was jolted awake and found the pickup was pointed toward a power pole on the side of the road.
Then the truck left the roadway and slid into some soft gravel and mud.
“It was a soft landing,” Ruby said.
Except the truck hit the power pole with a thud, and it snapped.
The top part of the pole sailed over the U-Haul.
At the same time, two large pieces of the pole splintered and went flying through the windshield of the pickup mounted on a trailer pulled by the U-Haul, accounting for the largest amount of damage, Ruby said.
While Ruby was wrestling with the U-Haul, his friend was blissfully unaware of the accident.
“I slept through the whole thing,” Bennett said.
Sparks and flames floated around the U-Haul, Ruby said, so he elected to stay in the cab.
The crash knocked out power to about 90 Idaho Power customers, company spokesman Dennis Lopez said.
The outage occurred at about 6:40 a.m., and power was fully restored, Lopez said, by 10:05 a.m., with 35 customers restored about halfway.
“It took two crews,” Lopez said.
Vale Ambulance Service responded, and though the pair was not injured, Ruby said the crew stayed until they could be checked out.
Ruby was chagrined by the incident, the whole reason he was making the trip was because he was afraid that his friend, traveling by himself, would fall asleep.
“It was I who didn’t perform my duty as designated driver,” he said.
Ruby also expressed regret about the crash.
“I sincerely apologize to the people who were without power, to people who were inconvenienced,” Ruby said. There was very minor damage done to the truck, and so, after few repairs, the two were cleared to go but decided to stay overnight in the area and get a fresh start Tuesday morning.
