By Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
A near head-on collision of two big rigs on a rain-slick highway had all the makings of disaster Monday morning.
A dump truck and a flatbed truck crashed at 11:19 a.m. on Old Beatty Ford Road, about a half-mile west of its intersection with Organ Church Road. The crash could be heard a mile away.
Almost miraculously, there were no serious injuries.
“I tell you what, this could have been a mess,” said Mike Zimmerman, chief of the Bostian Heights Fire Department. “Two large trucks like this hitting, you expect the worst.”
Kevin Holshouser, assistant chief of the Rockwell Rural Fire Department, agreed.
“It’s definitely the most damage I’ve ever seen in a wreck without anyone being critically injured,” he said.
Stan Hartsell of Stanfield was driving the 1994 Peterbuilt flatbed truck involved in the accident. He said he was traveling east on Old Beatty Ford Road when the hood on a Mitsubishi Montero in front of him suddenly flew straight up, apparently blocking the driver’s view of the road.
Hartsell said the driver of the SUV slammed on brakes.
“He didn’t try to stop, he just stopped,” Hartsell said.
Hartsell had a tougher time bringing his flatbed truck to a halt. He looked in front of him and saw a dump truck owned by the N.C. Department of Transportation coming at him in the opposite lane of travel.
Hartsell said that with few options and not a lot of time to decide, he braked his big rig while also trying to navigate around the SUV. It didn’t work. The flatbed began to slide, with the cab swerving into the ditch on the far side of the roadway.
“I just didn’t have nowhere to go,” Hartsell said. “I can’t stop this thing on a dime.”
The right corner of the flatbed’s trailer struck the cab of the oncoming dump truck, resulting in extensive damage to the truck. The dump truck struck the Mitsubishi, spinning the SUV around and into the ditch. Old Beatty Ford Road was blocked for more than an hour.
Hartsell said he jumped from the cab of his truck, ducked under the bed of his trailer and checked to see if the other drivers were injured.
“I started hollering, ‘Is everybody OK? Is everybody OK?’ ” Hartsell said.
Long after the wreck, Hartsell admitted he was still having a hard time getting his heart to stop pounding.
“I just thank God there were no fatalities,” he said.
Trooper C.J. Doty of the N.C. Highway Patrol said he was also thankful the injuries weren’t severe.
“Judging by the magnitude of the collision, I would think someone would be injured a whole lot worse than they were,” he said.
Doty said the Mitsubishi was driven by Gerald Young, 44, of Houston, Texas. Doty charged Young with reckless driving and displaying a fictitious tag. Young was the only driver involved taken to a hospital. He was at Carolinas Medical Center-NorthEast in Concord in fair condition Monday.
Doty said he went to the hospital to speak to Young, and he never mentioned the hood of his vehicle flying up, saying only that he had a vehicular emergency.
“He told me the first thing you do when you have an emergency is stop,” Doty said. “I told him you can’t stop in the middle of the road.”
Doty said another trooper at the scene inspected the hood latch of the Mitsubishi and found it to be damaged, though there was little damage to the rest of the vehicle’s front end.
The DOT dump truck was driven by Ricky Hill, 53, of Gold Hill.
There was a fair amount of oil and diesel fuel spilled onto Old Beatty Ford Road as a result of the accident. Firefighters said an out-of-county crew trained to deal with such spills was being brought in to clean the road.