Train collides with stuck truck
—Photo by MARLISA KEYES Brad Martin, left, speaks with John Parkinson, right about a close call he had with a train on Friday afternoon.
ELMIRA - Brad Martin took quick drags from his cigarette to calm himself a half hour after a train destroyed the truck he was driving Friday afternoon.
Martin, 30, was hauling a D8 cat on a lowboy for Algoma Truck Service when the trailer became hung up on a sharply angled incline while he preparing to drive over the Union Pacific Railroad crossing on Elmira Road.
The tracks run parallel and just east of Burlington Northern tracks that run along Highway 95.
See STUCK, Page 3
Martin climbed out of the truck and started to adjust the trailer to free it when he heard the train. The truck's nose bumped the platform on the outside of the train tracks.
“I started down and all of a sudden I heard that train,” Martin said. “There was nothin' I could do.” He said he watched the southbound train hit the cab of his truck.
Conductor Mike Logan of Spokane, said he was relieved when he saw Martin jump clear of the truck.
“I saw him run - it gave me a relief,” Logan said. He said this is the third train collision he has been involved in while working as a conductor.
Martin, who is married and has three children, tapped his chest several times, mimicking his rapidly beating heart, as he attempted to fill out a report for the Idaho State Police.
He stood up several times, then said he needed to sit down.
Martin was hauling the Cat for Elmira resident John Parkinson to Pacific Hide and Steel to be scrapped when the accident occurred.
Parkinson said they took every precaution moving the tractor and that he drove his own vehicle across tracks after checking to make sure they were clear. His son was behind Martin in a third vehicle.
He said when he heard the train, he started to worry, but he did not hear anything and thought Martin had stopped in time.
“Then all of a sudden the train stopped,” he said.
Trains traveling southbound approaching that crossing come from around a corner and through a thickly wooded area that has limited visibility. Typically trains travel 70 mph and faster through those stretches.
Parkinson said he has worked with Martin numerous times and he knew what he was doing when he started to adjust the trailer. However it takes a minute or two to make that adjustment - not enough time for Martin to have moved the truck before the train struck.
“By God no one got hurt,” Parkinson said.
Martin then asked the date and answered his own question - the 13th, Friday the 13th.
“It went as good as it possibly could go,” Martin said.