Driver Dies as Truck Hits Beam on Freeway

The driver of a crane truck was crushed to death Wednesday when his rig clipped the underpinnings of a bridge under construction over Interstate 5 in Del Mar, sending a 10-ton steel beam crashing into the truck cab.

All northbound lanes on the county’s major north-south freeway were blocked for 90 minutes and traffic immediately backed up for miles. At the height of rush hour, only one northbound lane was open as the crane truck and beam were being slowly removed.

Homeward-bound North County commuters tried to avoid the bottleneck by diverting to Interstate 15, Torrey Pines Road and Old Highway 101, but were greeted with bumper-to-bumper traffic jams.

A trip from La Jolla to Solana Beach that normally takes five minutes took an hour or more.

Five-Hour Closure

The four northbound lanes finally were reopened at about 6:30 p.m., five hours after the accident occurred, a California Highway Patrol spokeswoman said Wednesday night.

Truck driver Leslie Wayne Bell, 41, of San Diego was northbound at an estimated 35 m.p.h. when he failed to clear the bridge at Del Mar Heights Road. The rig brought down the northernmost of 14 temporary support beams.

The 75-foot-long beam crashed to the road, slicing open the roof of a Volkswagen, smashing into the truck’s cab and killing Bell instantly. The rig slammed to a halt 50 yards north of the bridge.

“He was 30 to 40 yards ahead of me when I heard a terrible noise,� said Alejandrina Tucker, whose Volkswagen was in the lane next to the crane rig. “I veered to the left to escape the beam.�

Checked His Pulse

“I know CPR, so I stopped and checked his pulse,� said Tucker, a pharmaceutical company employee from Santa Ana who was returning home after visiting a daughter in San Diego. “The pressure of the beam just killed him instantly. He never knew what hit him.�

The crane rig, owned by Marco Crane & Rigging Co. of San Diego, Phoenix and Tucson, was in the slow lane when the 1:30 p.m. accident occurred. The rig was not involved in the construction project.

“He thought he was going to clear it without any trouble,� Tucker said. “He never slowed down. I didn’t know how close that beam came until I saw the rip in the top of my car. I’m lucky. Very lucky. I could have been smashed.�

Shirley Kunz, who was driving behind the crane truck, thought she was going to be killed.

‘All Coming Down’

“I stepped on my brakes and I thought for sure I was going into it (the beam),� she said. “I could see it all coming down on me. I thought for sure I was going to be dead. It started down straight.�

The accident closed northbound lanes while wood from the bridge scaffolding and twisted metal and shards of glass from the crane rig were cleared away. Cars were sent on a twisting detour through the San Dieguito River Valley and back to I-5 along Via de la Valle.

After 90 minutes, one northbound lane was reopened. Later, as a crane slowly removed the crushed rig and the beam, even that lane was closed. Throughout the afternoon, the traffic backup stretched to the I-5 interchange with Interstate 805 and to the Genesee Avenue off-ramp in La Jolla.

“When you shut down a major freeway for that amount of time, you’ve got people with no place to go,� said CHP spokesman Jim Logan. “It’s like a parking lot out there.�

Dozen Cars Sideswiped

Amid the slowdown, a car traveling north went out of control and sideswiped a dozen cars. The driver was taken to a hospital by paramedics and treated for minor injuries.

Officers of the CHP and the California Department of Transportation were at a loss to explain how the crane rig cleared most of the beams before scraping two and sending the final one sliding down. One theory was that the boom or another part of the rig may have snapped upward and hit the beams.

Caltrans engineer Bob Breidenbaugh, who rushed to the scene, said the support beams, which stretch horizontally, are measured carefully for clearance before traffic is allowed beneath a construction project.

Breidenbaugh said the beams are at least 14 feet, 8 inches off the ground at the edge of the freeway and higher as the bridge arches toward the center divider.

On the south side of the bridge in the northbound lanes is a large sign indicating that the clearance is 14 feet, 6 inches.

“Every indication we have is that there was plenty of clearance,� said Caltrans spokesman Jim Larson. “We do not feel this was an over-height vehicle. Probably something got away--the boom jerked up and hit the beam. We’ve had structural damage at other bridges in the past. Damage of bridges is a major problem statewide.�

Larson said that when the bridge is completed, the clearance will be 16 feet, 6 inches. In the 1950s, Caltrans built bridges with a clearance of 15 feet, but that has been increased to accommodate ever-taller vehicles, including crane rigs, that use state freeways.

The $3.6-million Del Mar Heights Road bridge project, which began last March and is to be completed in June, is meant to replace a two-lane bridge. The work is being done by Brutoco Engineering of Fontana.

The support beams, which had been in place for about two weeks, are to remain until the concrete structure of the bridge is complete. They will then be removed.

“The crane truck apparently caught the steel beam somehow and dragged it with it,� motorist Ellen Williams told The Associated Press. “As it dragged it, all of that wood support structure was falling down behind it. It was like Lincoln Logs, falling and collapsing all around the truck.�

There were no workers on the bridge at the time of accident. They were working on a drainage ditch portion of the project near the off-ramp.

On Tuesday, however, workers spent the day on the scaffolding and beams that came tumbling down. “A day earlier and I’d have been on top of that thing,� said one construction worker.

The bridge takes traffic between Del Mar on the west and North City West on the east.

Dedicated to Victim

The project is dedicated to the memory of David Hoffman, a Caltrans engineer killed in an Oceanside road rehabilitation project last year. Hoffman was to have been manager of the Del Mar Heights Road project.

Under Caltrans regulations, crane rigs that exceed clearance levels must receive special permits, which allow them to use the freeways but mark where they must leave the freeway to avoid overhead construction. Larson said he did not know whether the Marco rig had such a permit.

The boom on such rigs is meant to stay as horizontal to the bed of the rig as possible while the rig is traveling, then be hoisted upright at the construction site.

Times staff writers Curtis L. Taylor and Kathie Bozanich contributed to this story.