As is often the case, I've got a plethora of weblog posts stored up in my head that I've been meaning to type up and post but haven't found the time. I'll try to get to those soon, perhaps over the upcoming holidays. However here's a good one to start the ball rolling.
Some of you may have noticed that AkuAku was offline for about 24 hours starting Monday afternoon. I was sitting upstairs with most of the PlaceSite team around 3PM. We were happily coding away on our laptops when suddenly there was a loud boom and the entire house shook violently. "Earthquake," ventured one startled hacker, but there was only one jolt which seemed odd. I scaled the fire escape and peered around the corner from the back of the house on the fourth floor deck. From this height I was looking directly across to the power lines at the far end of the house. They were shaking and there was an explosive ball of light. It looked as if the power lines were leaning against the front of the house.
Fearing imminent fire, I ran back downstairs and exclaimed "the power lines are touching the house!" In retrospect my next move might not have been so bright, but I cautiously approached my bedroom window which overlooks the street at the front of the house. I could see the power lines at an odd angle but still ten feet or so from the house. Peering outside I looked down at the top of a ~20' rental truck that was firmly embedded into my neighbors house with a telephone pole snapped in two and resting across the back corner of the truck.
Neighbors were gathering in the street already. I yelled down to ask if anyone was in the truck or the smashed car next to it. Jim from across the street said he didn't think so. I ran out into the street to the front of the truck, being careful not to touch any of the power and communication lines which were hanging loose on the ground and low in the air on the street and sidewalk. There didn't seem to be anyone in either vehicle, so I started to make my way into the house. That's when I realized that it looked like the telephone pole was precariously balanced on the back corner of the truck. I had just walked under that thing! But then I realized there was no really safe way back into the house, and like an idiot I had run out barefoot. Carefully studying the pole and truck looking for anything that might suddenly give way, finally I sprinted back under the mayhem and back into the house where I grabbed the camera and started shooting pictures.
Soon five fire trucks, motorcycle cops and various PG&E vehicles took over the entire street. The firemen asked us to evacuate the building just in case. The next few hours we gathered stories from the neighbors who had witnessed the whole thing and watched as PG&E and a couple of tow trucks restored order.
Apparently the truck had started at the top of our hill. The driver had just pulled up to take a job moving a woman's belonging out of her house and he neglected to block the wheels when he left the truck parked on the street as he went up to her house. Gravity did its thing and the truck started rolling forward. Witnesses say that it seemed the emergency brake was partially engaged, keeping it from gaining full speed, but still it gained more velocity as it made its way down the hill alternating between the street and the sidewalk. Amazingly, it was street cleaning day on that side of the street so the 60 yard stretch between the top of the hill and my house was atypically devoid of parked cars, allowing the truck to build momentum unfettered by much more than a now-flattened street sign and a glancing blow off of a tree.
When it reached the telephone pole in front of my house it had picked up enough speed to snap it like a twig inches above the sidewalk then finally hit the first parked car it encountered and slam into my downhill neighbors' garage, narrowly missing my housemate's motorcyle. If it had not been street cleaning day my car would almost certainly had been parked right next to that light pole.
When the truck had just got started, neighbors say the driver of the truck had run out into the street chasing after it, screaming warnings. Someone from across the street told me that when the truck first snapped the pole it started to oscillate back and forth and whenever it touched our house sparks were flying to brightly that you couldn't look directly at them. My housemates and I are not sure if the power lines ever actually touched our house though as there are no definite marks to show for it.
Much excitement! After sundown they finally were able to extract the pole from the truck, and by 7PM the truck had been removed leaving shattered brick and a gaping hole in the neighbors garage. By 1AM or so they had a new pole erected but it took until midday on Tuesday for power to be restored and then late afternoon until RCN reconnected my Internet (and thus the AkuAku.org server).
By the way, this is my first weblog post using the nifty new Flock browser. It has a number of amazing features, but one of them is handy weblog editor that integrates tightly with Flick allowing me to drag and drop images from my Flickr stream directly into the post editor. Very nice!
Oh and the title of this post alludes to both the Douglas Adam theory of flying (throw yourself at the ground and miss) and Phillip Hart's haiku celebrating gravity:
The moon falls earthward, The earth falls into the sun, And both keep missing.
technorati tags: runaway truck, gravity, danger, chaos
