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The Honolulu Advertiser
Updated at 2:38 p.m., Wednesday, April 30, 2008

West-bound H-1 reopens after truck hits Gulick overpass

Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

All west-bound lanes of the H-1 Freeway have been reopened after a truck carrying a shipping container lodged itself beneath the Gulick Avenue overpass in Kalihi this morning in the second incident of its kind in less than a week.

Like a commercial truck that crashed into the Gulick Avenue overpass in the opposite direction on Thursday, the truck belonging to Alliance trucking also did not have a permit to carry its load this morning, said Scott Ishikawa, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.

DOT crews closed all three lanes of the west-bound H-1 for about an hour to bring in a forklift to dislodge the truck, Ishikawa said.

The crash occurred shortly before 10 a.m. today.

On Thursday, a truck carrying a steel counterweight without a proper permit struck the H-1 Freeway's Gulick Avenue overpass, temporarily disrupting east-bound morning traffic.

The collision sent small chunks of the overpass to the freeway below, but DOT engineers determined that the overpass was structurally sound.

Police cited the driver of the Island Topsoil Service truck for not having a DOT permit to carry the steel counterweight, which was used to balance a 10-foot shipping container, Ishikawa said.

The top of the counterweight was 6 inches higher than the 14-foot, 3-inch clearance height of the Gulick overpass, Ishikawa said.

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.