By Rod Rose/The Lebanon Reporter
Lebanon — Playing remote controls with the finesse of brain surgeons, crews from Zore’s Towing Service righted a Lebanon Utility line truck that toppled during a transformer replacement at Lebanon Middle School Tuesday.
Two gargantuan 10-wheel wreckers, one capable of lifting 85 tons and the other 75 tons, were used to first secure and then upright the line truck.
A mechanical failure may have caused the accident, Lebanon Fire Chief Ted Caldwell said.
Utility lineman Jesse Wilhoite suffered a broken wrist when he fell off the truck, said Lebanon Utility general manager Mike Martin. Wilhoite could have been seriously hurt when the line truck fell against a cinder block wall.
“We got lucky,” Martin said. “We’ll be investigating the cause.”
The crew was “as prepared as they could be” for the transformer swap, Martin said.
Monday, Martin said, the crew had determined how to replace an old transformer on the school’s west side, in a service area squeezed between an air handling unit and the wall.
“They’d planned and worked the plan when this freak accident happened,” Martin said.
As the old transformer was being lifted over the wall to be loaded onto a trailer, the boom “apparently over-rotated,” Martin said, tilting the truck’s left side into the air. Only the wall kept the truck from overturning.
A small dump truck carrying the new transformer had been moved between the school building and the line truck. Overhanging the dump truck’s bed was the left rear outrigger of the line truck.
Inches away from the dump truck’s front bumper was the natural gas supply line for the school, Caldwell said. Vectren Energy shut off the gas, but enough remained in the line to be dangerous, Caldwell said.
It took about three hours to right the line truck.
No events had been planned at the school, said Bob Ross, Lebanon Community School Corp. business manager.
The block wall will be torn down and rebuilt further away from the building.
