A dump truck hauling a load of gravel overturned Thursday afternoon after colliding with a car on Route 119 in East Huntingdon, spilling its contents across the highway and trapping a man inside the car. The crash happened around 2 p.m. just north of the Technology Drive bridge, shutting down the northbound lanes for more than an hour while crews worked to clear the scene.
The collision left the car's rear section smashed and the dump truck on its side, according to TribLIVE, which first reported the crash. Gravel from the truck's bed spilled across the roadway, forcing crews to bring in bulldozers to scrape the loose material off the pavement before traffic could move again. The outlet reported that a man in the car was trapped inside the vehicle, though additional details were not immediately available.
Cleanup Effort Delays Northbound Traffic for Over an Hour
Clearing the roadway proved to be a lengthy job. Beyond scraping gravel off the highway surface, crews also had to remove the remaining gravel still sitting in the dump truck's bed before the wreck could be fully cleared, the report notes. That combination of tasks kept Route 119's northbound lanes closed for more than an hour. Pennsylvania State Police investigated the collision, per the same account.
Further specifics about what led to the crash, or the condition of the man reported trapped in the car, were not available at the time of TribLIVE's report.
A Separate Gravel Truck Crash Reported Nearby
In a separate incident, WPXI reported that a gravel truck and a van crashed near Technology Drive in Hempfield Township, with dispatchers saying emergency crews were called to that scene at 2:04 p.m. The station reported the gravel truck had rolled onto its driver's side while the van sustained heavy damage to its rear, and that one person was taken to a hospital from the scene.
Members of the Fort Allen Volunteer Fire Company told WPXI the truck driver was trapped when they arrived, with one firefighter saying, “It took 21 minutes to get to the driver.” It is not established whether this crash and the one described by TribLIVE on Route 119 in East Huntingdon are the same incident.
