Route 130 accident sends postal driver to hospital
By: Rob Heyman , Managing Editor Messenger Press
Traffic
snarled for hours.
WASHINGTON — The driver of a postal delivery truck was sent to the hospital this
morning after his truck flipped over after hitting a utility pole and then a
guard rail along the southbound lane of Route 130.
The driver, who has not been identified, apparently failed to notice that
traffic had stopped in front of him in the vicinity of the Washington Township
Fire Department, where a fire truck was leaving in response to a call in
Allentown at about 9 a.m., said Fire Chief Kevin Brink.
An official report of the accident was not available from the Washington
Township Police Department Wednesday afternoon.
In an apparent attempt to avoid hitting a car, the driver left the
southbound lane, hit a utility pole, then hit the guardrail and flipped over.
The impact on the utility police snapped it in half causing a 110-volt power
line to fall on the postal truck, where the driver was trapped, Chief Brink
said.
Before emergency crews could extricate the driver, power had to be shut off
to the utilities lines by crews from PSE&G. HazMat crews were also on the scene
to contain a fuel leak due to a rupture in the truck's diesel tank as a result
of the accident.
Chief Brink said the driver was bleeding but was conscious and complaining
of abdominal and chest pain.
The township's Fire Department, along with other area emergency crews,
managed to remove the driver. He was transported to Helene Fuld Medical Center
in Trenton. His condition at the hospital was unknown Wednesday afternoon, but
Chief Brink described him as being in "serious but stable" condition at the
scene of the accident.
The accident initially closed the north and southbound lanes of Route 130
for about an hour. Traffic was diverted down Sharon Road and Woodside Drive as
detours. By early afternoon, the truck was removed from the road and traffic was
moving again on Route 130 but in a regulated manner under police and state
Department of Transportation supervision.
Chief Brink said the accident was the third call the Fire Department
received at around 9 a.m. When the accident happened, a fire truck was en route
to the Upper Freehold Elementary School responding to a fire alarm, and the
department's ambulance was on a medical call to the Rose Hill Assisting Living
Facility in Robbinsville.
Ambulance service for the postal driver was provided by Robert Wood Johnson
University Hospital at Hamilton.
