LOCAL NEWS

Semi Slams Into Garden City Storage Building

Aug 15, 2019, 11:43 PM | Updated: 11:45 pm

GARDEN CITY, Utah – For the second time in less than a year, a semi-truck plowed through the same intersection at Bear Lake, and then slammed into a building.

“I can see that it just could have really been bad,” said witness George Vogel.

Vogel was visiting Garden City on Thursday to look at real estate. He had just finished lunch at a nearby restaurant when he heard a horn blaring and saw a semi headed toward the stop sign.

“It was apparent at that point that he couldn’t stop. As we ran over there, of course, the brake smell was totally evident,” he said.

Lieutenant Lee Perry with the Utah Highway Patrol said the driver did everything he could to avoid hitting any people or cars. He succeeded, but eventually slammed into some storage units.

Unfortunately, this was a familiar scene for first responders and others near Bear Lake. In October 2018, a semi driver slammed into a sporting goods store at the same intersection of U.S. Highway 89 and State Route 30.

In that crash, the 31-year-old driver was killed, and the building was a total loss.

Lt. Perry said in this most recent crash the truck, carrying chocolate milk, lost its brakes as it approached the intersection.

“The cab went totally inside the building,” Vogel said. “The roof blew off or it blew up like an explosion.”

Fortunately this crash had a better outcome.

Medics took the driver to the hospital with a fractured eye socket. Incredibly, nothing else was hit and no one else was hurt.

“To me this was just kind of a best case scenario, because if there had been cars in the intersection or pedestrians… I think everyone was just fortunate,” Vogel said.

As of Thursday night, the semi-truck had been removed from the scene. The driver, who lives in Alabama, was still in the hospital.

With two semi crashes in less than a year, Lt. Perry said UHP and the city mayor had reached out to the Utah Department of Transportation about taking a closer look at the road and intersection.

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Semi Slams Into Garden City Storage Building