Boston Pizza was almost turned into a drive-thru by an out-of-control rig sliding down Peden Hill Thursday.
The Excel Transportation chip truck was on its way down the steep highway but before it reached the Cowart Road intersection at the bottom, the truck apparently lost its breaks. The truck jackknifed, arched sharply left and was still travelling at a high rate of speed as it bore down on the restaurant. It plowed through a snowbank along the curb and came to a stop mere inches from the building.
"He knew he wasn't stopping," said one witness. "He was coming down the hill and I was going up, and he flew past me wailing on his horn, and I don't know how fast he was going but it sure wasn't slow. There was a fair amount of traffic. He was in the inside lane and in my rearview mirror I saw him make the turn at the bottom and I thought 'Holy (cow) that was a fast turn,' he was just a streak across the intersection."
The witness said by the sequence of events, "I think he saw a safe opening at the bottom and decided to ditch the truck instead of heading on and maybe hit a red light (at Ferry Avenue)."
A clerk in the Mr. G Store across the street from Boston Pizza watched the truck and its B-train fold in on itself as it came through the junction and headed towards the restaurant.
"He sat in the truck for a couple of seconds after it came to a stop, then he came out of the truck with the fire extinguisher," said the clerk. "The brakes were smoking pretty good, you could really smell it."
The owner of the truck, he did not identify himself, told The Citizen that the driver had something go wrong with the brakes but they didn't know anything definitive yet.
RCMP spokesman Cpl. Craig Douglass said "we will be checking into that, and doing a full mechanical inspection" but no determinations had been made by investigators.
He gave voice to everyone's main impression of the scene: "I just can't believe nobody was injured or killed. It's quite a scene here, but we are all thankful this is the extent of the damage."
Inside Boston Pizza, customers came in to sit at the table next to the twisted rig, just to watch the action. When the truck plowed up to within two feet of the patio structure at the southeast corner, alongside the main entrance.
"I couldn't believe it but nobody screamed or made a sound," said one of the restaurant servers. "Everyone was calm. A lot of us didn't even know anything had happened until people started pointing to it. Everyone just kind of stared, in shock."
"We will have a little memorial for the tree," said another server. The only known casualty of the incident was an ornamental tree that was crushed to kindling under the sliding hulk. "Everybody is so amazed, and so thankful that everyone is all right. I don't know how the driver is, but I hope he was OK."
Some customers craned their necks, one of them saying "where's the truck?" because the rig was folded back out of sight against the trailer. A loader and super-sized tow truck came to disentangle the pieces, but there was no visible sign of destruction to the tractor or trailer components.
Police continue to investigate.
