BREAKING NEWS: Congress St 7-11 truck crash

A truck from DS Foundations Incorporated carrying metal racks full of heavy plywood foundation wall forms crashed into a parked car and the corner of the brick building at 696 Congress Street just before 9:00am on Sunday, September 12, 2010. Previously the truck had lost a portion of its load at the end of Valley Street, near the Veterans Bridge between Portland and South Portland, which as late as 11:40am was being supervised by a Portland Police vehicle after it was abandoned at the side of the road.

People at the scene stated that witnesses of the crash apprehended someone exiting the truck when he attempted to flee the scene.

At the scene, fire officers and police officers had strung caution tape around the 7-11 convenience store, and were supervising the removal of the truck and the bulk of its load of plywood foundation forms, which had toppled off the truck bed along its path to destruction.

Above, fire and police personnel consult near the scene of the accident. Concern was expressed over the worrying possibility that the structural integrity of the Congress Street apartment building had been compromised by the impact.

More photos from the scene are available for viewing here on my Flicker site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkbrilliance/sets/72157624815359789/with/4983339276/

Above, the DS Foundations truck is towed away. A number of heavy duty trucks from Stewart's Towing were on the scene, as well as a smattering of trucks from other towing companies, as the wrecked truck's cargo had to be parceled out due to its heavy weight. You can clearly see where the truck impacted the building and crushed its fender at the center. The windshield is also cracked.

UPDATE:

WCSH-6 was on the scene, and reports that Arthur Lariviere of Portland was put into custody at the Cumberland County Jail after stealing the truck from a construction site on Danforth Street. "Lariviere crashed into a car in the parking lot of the 7/11 on Congress Street in Portland around 8:45 AM Sunday. The truck pushed the car forward, then veered off and slammed into another car. The second car was crushed - pinned between the truck and the building at 696 Congress street."

[Source: http://www.wcsh6.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=127688&catid=2]
Video and photos available on the WCSH website as linked above!

Who rescues the rescuers?

The Boston Globe reports on a freak mudding accident in Maine:

Maine EMT struck by monster truck, saved by mud
July 27, 2009
The Associated Press

LEBANON, Maine— A Maine rescue department volunteer struck by a monster truck at a mud race avoided serious injuries thanks to a cocoon of mud. Jason Cole, assistant rescue chief in the southern Maine town of Lebanon, says the driver lost control of her truck Sunday at the "Go Deep Mud" contest when the throttle became stuck.
[...]
Cole says the EMT sank so far into the mud that only his face was showing, and the truck's 35-inch tires passed on either side of him.
[...]
Read full article here: [Source]

Mudding is a favorite sport of many Mainers who own four-wheelers, involving mud and 4x4 trucks gone wild. If you've ever seen a truck going by you on the Maine highway, plastered in dried mud, you know what they've been up to! Here is a visual example of mudding:

If this has piqued your curiosity, you may want to check out Maine Mud Runs, a website dedicated to "providing the most complete and up to date information about anything to do with Mud Running, Mud Bogging or Mud Racing in Maine, New England and New Brunswick." Yep.

When one of your annual seasons is the Mud Season, you might as well get some fun out of it!

Watch out for falling moose!

Photo by Vilseskogen, used under the terms of Creative Commons.

A very intriguing report from the Kennebec Journal. ONLY IN MAINE!

Thanks to Jean K. for spotting this gem!

'A moose fell from the sky'
Submitted By Larry Grard,
Staff Writer
on Tuesday, May. 12 at 1:15 pm

CLINTON -- The moose that “fell from the sky,” in an observer’s words, landed on its head and quickly died.

The yearling bull nearly took a man with him after it fell from the Interstate 95 overpass onto Hinckley Road.

Shirley Bailey, assistant town clerk, got the frantic call shortly after 8 a.m. today.

The caller was driving along the road when he saw the moose fall.

Bailey recalled his comments: “I was driving under the bridge on Hinckley Road and a moose fell from the sky.”

The man was “a little shook up,” Bailey said. “It was quite frightening, I guess.”

Minutes later, the Waldo County Sheriff’s Department took a call of a young bull moose on I-95, not far away in Burnham.

[Source]

More here at the Lewiston Sun Journal.

Deering Oaks smash-up!

Those of you who were wondering what the upside-down car in Deering Oaks on that foggy night the other week was all about, here's the scoop!

Driver Flips Car into Deering Oaks Park After Reckless Ride
Tuesday, March 31, 3009

Portland police arrested Ahmed Ibrahim, 24, a Parkside resident, at around midnight on March 27th, after they say he hit four parked cars and a house - on different streets - while driving around his home turf. Police say Ibrahim also ran a red light, and he has no driver’s license.

After hitting each car, police say, Ibrahim kept going and didn’t stop until taking a turn that was too wide at the intersection of State Street and Park Avenue, which caused his car to flip and then catch on fire on the grass at the front of Deering Oaks Park. Ibrahim was transported to Maine Medical Center, but had no serious injuries.

Parkside residents reported hearing a very loud acceleration of a car motor, followed by the sound of impact, almost immediately followed by sirens, which led them to speculate that it was a high-speed car pursuit that ended quickly.

Charges are pending, since the case is still under investigation.

-Marge Niblock and Michelle Souliere contributed to this report.

[Source]

I found mention of it on the WCSH-TV6 site as well (click here to read), once we had a name for the fellow.

Also on the WCSH site, Kellyanne2 posted about her run-in with the perpetrator: "I almost got hit by this guy! I was seconds away from parking right where he ran into, taking a street sign along with him. I had to push on my gas pedal and burn out, with him coming up behind me, until I, myself had to run a red light to get away from him as I went straight into the ice arena parking lot when he turned right and seconds later he found himself upside down on Park Ave! It was the craziest thing I've ever seen!! I was shaking for a long time afterwards."

Face plant... off the roof!

Well, I've done my share of face plants on the ski slopes, but this is ridiculous! At any rate, he figured a way out of it.

Head over heels
By Mark LaFlamme , Staff Writer
Thursday, February 21, 2008

NAPLES - The first part of the challenge was fighting panic and finding a way to breathe. With his face buried in snow and most of his body immobilized, George Sovas of Naples had few options. He started by eating snow, blowing it with his mouth, trying to move it with his nose.

Where there's a will, as the adage goes, there's a way.

For two hours Tuesday, the 57-year-old Sovas was buried upside down and headfirst in a giant mound of ice and snow that slid off his ex-wife's house roof.

"The only thing sticking up was my butt and my legs," Sovas said Wednesday night. "I was headfirst and backwards in the snow. It was packed like concrete."

It had started as a good deed.

On Tuesday afternoon, Sovas got his ladder on top of a snowbank in order to clear ice from his ex-wife's roof on Liberty Road. The winter has been particularly severe though, and ice and snow built up on the roof, and Sovas wanted to clear a portion of it to prevent leaks and damage.

That's when his premature burial began.

"I was trying to break a section of ice off the right corner of the house," Sovas said. "But with that small jarring, the weight of the ice still up at the top ripped all of the cutters off the roof. It came down like a freight train and just wiped me out. It hit me in the chest. It threw me clear over the ladder upside down. It was like doing a backflip."

[snip]

Sovas was alive and warm Wednesday night. There is plenty of winter left, but the ice on the roof? Forget about it.

"Let it slide off; I'm not going there. Too dangerous," Sova said. "Way too dangerous."

Read full article here -- it's totally worth it!!! [Source

One foot in the grave...

As you might have noticed, I'm catching up on some slightly-older news items that have been sitting in my inbox patiently awaiting my attention over the last few months. One of the more singular "weird news" items was pointed out to me by the folks at the New England Anomaly, as well as one of the editors over at our local Port City Life magazine. It originally appeared in the Kennebec Journal/Morning Sentinel back in October.

Grave mishap: Funeral director now recovering after fall in cemetery and hearse ride to hospital
By BETTY ADAMS, Staff Writer
10/10/2007

AUGUSTA -- There are falls from grace and falls into graves.
Take Leo Murphy's, for instance.

One misstep at the Maine Veterans Memorial Cemetery during a Sept. 20 burial service, and the longtime funeral director from Augusta found himself in a grave, looking up through a cloud of dust.

"I fell in the grave backwards," Murphy said, two and a half weeks into his recovery. "I hit my left side on the corner of the grave. All of a sudden, I saw a cloud of dust, and that's where I was in the hole."

A gloved hand reached down and Murphy, who will be 80 in two weeks, reached up with his right hand and was raised from the grave.
...
Then his son, Pat, convinced him to get into the Plummer Funeral Home hearse to ride to the emergency room at MaineGeneral Medical Center.

"I was in the front seat when the security guard came around," Murphy said. "He said, 'Usually they don't come in this end.'"

Murphy was treated for two fractured ribs and a chest wall contusion, said another son, Michael.
...
He said it was his first mishap at a grave in his 61 years as a funeral director.
...
Full article available online here: [Source]