PORT ANGELES — First came the earsplitting scraping, then the deafening boom and the cloud of sand.
In the silence that followed, witnesses heard the footsteps of more than a dozen people running to the scene, most of them frantically punching 9-1-1 on their cell phones.
An Olympic National Park dump truck laden with sand lost its brakes at about 7:45 a.m. Friday on the grade down Mount Angeles Road, said Port Angeles Police Sgt. Jack Lowell.
The truck barreled across Park Avenue and Lauridsen Boulevard, past school children waiting to cross the street.
It turned onto its side at Ninth Street, witnesses said, and skidded for a block on Race Street before stopping just short of the Eighth Street intersection.
Other witnesses of the crash praised the driver, Paul Duce of Port Angeles, for slowing the truck as much as he could by dumping its load to reduce weight and lowering the blade of his snowplow onto the pavement.
They said the blade appeared to catch the curb near Ninth Street, sending the northbound truck into the southward lanes, where it turned onto its side.
Duce was treated and released from Olympic Medical Center.
No one else was hurt.
“At least a half-dozen people came up to me and said they should give that driver an award,” Lowell said.
“With the potential the incident could have had, it turned out to be very minor.”
Duce, a park employee since 1982 and a heavy equipment operator the past 5½ years, spreads sand regularly on often-snowy Hurricane Ridge Road and removes rocks that have slipped to the pavement.
