Tree falls on truck on Route 40
WEST BROWNSVILLE – A bizarre accident on Route 40 Thursday afternoon had a New York truck driver shaking wood chips from his hair and thanking God for his safety. The first call for emergency service said a truck hit a tree near the Lane-Bane Bridge. The second call said a tree had gone through the windshield of a tractor-trailer truck.
Trucker Hernan Jaramillo was on his way from Cleveland, Ohio, to Cumberland, Md., when the accident occurred.
“A dead tree fell off the hillside and went through this gentleman’s windshield. He doesn’t have a scratch on him,” said Trooper Jerry Cooley of the state police barracks in Uniontown. “We got the call around 3:10. I didn’t know what I was going to find.”
Jaramillo did have a few very minor scratches on his hands and a cut finger that required a small bandage, but given the nature of the accident, he was unscathed. The safety glass windshield was smashed in and was lying across the steering wheel. A section of a large tree limb or trunk about 6 to 8 inches in diameter protruded into the cab of the truck.
Despite the unexpected nature of the incident, Jaramillo was able to keep his truck under control and brought it to a stop on the shoulder, less than a half-mile down the road, just past the West Brownsville exit ramp on Route 40 eastbound.
“He did a good job,” Cooley said.
Jaramillo said a friend of his had called him on his cellular telephone just as the accident occurred.
“I cried into the phone,” Jaramillo said.
The truck then moved into a spot where he no longer had a cellular connection, so his friend was left wondering what had occurred.
“He called me again and I said, ‘I can’t talk to you right now,'” Jaramillo said.
Jaramillo said the dead tree struck the top corner of the passenger side of the cab.
“It hit the corner and the tree was breaking. One part came into the side,” he said. “I was afraid when that happened. I talked all the time with God to help me.”
Several broken pieces of the tree could be seen along the side of the road where the accident occurred, each of them several feet in length. Jaramillo said one section swung around and struck the driver’s side mirror. The top marker lights on the truck also suffered damage.
“When the ambulance came, they said, ‘You were lucky,'” Jaramillo said.
In addition to the state police, the West Brownsville Volunteer Fire Department and Brownsville Ambulance Service Inc. were dispatched to the scene.