honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted at 11:47 a.m., Monday, December 17, 2007

Runaway truck crashes into Maui man's home

By BRIAN PERRY
The Maui News

WAILUKU — Tony Uy's two-story house shook after a thunderous crash jolted him awake early Sunday morning.

"I thought it was an airplane crash or an earthquake," the 68-year-old man told The Maui News. "My wife was screaming something bad had happened."

He rushed to his second-story bedroom window, but he saw nothing except his view of Kahului Harbor. Then, his tenant, 86-year-old Alfred Huang, whose bedroom faces the West Maui Mountains, came to tell him a large truck had crashed into the wall of the home's dining room and kitchen.

"The house shake," said Huang, who had also thought the commotion around 4:45 a.m. was caused by an earthquake. But from his window he saw a large water tanker truck where there should have been only a concrete wall and a neatly trimmed lawn.

Uy called police, and Huang said he went outside to check on the driver. There was none. There also was no blood or anything to show whether someone had been behind the wheel and might have been injured in the crash.

Painted on the door of the truck, however, was the name Spencer Homes Inc.

And, according to Spencer Homes Vice President Mark Spencer, police found a cell phone in the tanker's cab belonging to a 13-year-old girl who lives not far from Uy's home.

Maui police did not have information on the incident Sunday.

Spencer said he understood what happened was that three or four youths, 15 to 18 years old, had gotten into an accident on Waiko Road, with one of the youth's pickup trucks going off the road. In making their way home on foot, they apparently went to the Spencer Home job site at the Waikapu Gardens subdivision and found a key that had been hidden somewhere in the tanker truck.

He said they reportedly used the key to start the truck and drive up to the 13-year-old girl's residence in the Maunaleo neighborhood of the Kehalani subdivision. But, because the youths didn't know how to properly park a heavy truck equipped with air brakes, the tanker eventually began rolling downhill with no driver, Spencer said.

Neighbors heard the truck "jerking down the street," which is what would happen if the truck's brakes had not been properly set on a hill, he said.

The truck crashed through a white fence separating Uy's property from Komo Ohia Street, its front-right fender pushed up against Uy's dining room window, bending the wall inward but not breaking the window's glass. The axle of the back of the truck came to rest on a hollow-tile wall that supported the fence.

Later in the morning, the spectacle of a water tanker truck kissing the side of a home drew a small crowd of neighbors and curious onlookers, with some recording the incident with digital and video cameras.

Spencer called a crew from Maui Crane Service, which came to the scene of the accident despite having been working nearly all night at another job site. Spencer said the crane crew at first asked if the tanker could be hauled up on Monday, but he pleaded with them, and they came Sunday morning.

The crane lifted the truck from its back side enough to pull it away from Uy's corner-lot home at 8 Maunaleo St. Then, a truck operator was able to drive the tanker through a portion of the resident's lawn and onto Maunaleo Street.

Aside from a partially caved-in dining room wall and window and a destroyed fence section, Uy's outdoor air-conditioning unit also was damaged by the runaway truck.

Spencer told Uy to get an insurance estimate and then a crew from Spencer Homes would go to Uy's house today to begin making repairs.

"This is traumatic for the people in the house," Spencer said. "We would get in and do whatever he wanted us to do," even before a home insurance estimate is completed.

Although it would have been better had the accident not happened at all, Spencer said it was "extremely fortunate" to have unfolded the way it did.

The truck's water tank was empty, dramatically reducing its weight. And, it hit Uy's home in a section without supporting beams, Spencer said.

"If it had kept going down the street, gaining speed, who knows what could have happened," he said.

Uy said he was grateful the truck had been slowed and then stopped by his retaining wall

"Actually, what saved us was this wall," he said. Otherwise, the tanker "would shoot all the way inside the house."

The water tanker is one of three or four vehicles owned by the development company. It is used for dust control.

The truck sustained some damage, which was being assessed Sunday. But its brakes worked, and it was in good enough shape to drive away, Spencer said.

For more Maui news, visit The Maui News.