This pickup truck careened off an Interstate 79 overpass at the Houston interchange in North Strabane Township on Monday night and crash landed onto Route 519 below. [Courtesy of North Strabane Fire Department]<\/p>\n
A motorist is \u201clucky to be alive\u201d after his pickup truck careened off an Interstate 79 overpass at the Houston interchange in North Strabane Township and crash landed onto Route 519 below. <\/p>\n
The driver was traveling north on the interstate about 8 p.m. Monday when he lost control of his work truck and drove off the highway, striking the guidewires and guardrail along the grassy median, North Strabane Public Safety Director Mark Grimm said.<\/p>\n
Grimm said he then \u201crode the side of the bridge\u201d and struck the bridge embankment before crashing down onto Route 519. The truck pancaked onto the roadway below, and North Strabane firefighters needed to cut the driver out of the vehicle, Grimm said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe kind of rode it down. (His truck) hugged the bridge,\u201d Grimm said. \u201cThe bridge probably saved his life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man was flown by medical helicopter to a Pittsburgh area hospital for treatment, and his condition and name were not immediately released.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s lucky to be alive,\u201d Grimm said.<\/p>\n
Just as fortunate was that no vehicles were traveling under the overpass on Route 519 when the crash occurred. <\/p>\n
\u201cJust when you say you\u2019ve seen it all, then this appears,\u201d Grimm said.<\/p>\n
Route 519 was closed for about two hours, and I-79\u2019s northbound lanes had minor restrictions while state police investigated and crews removed the wreckage. State police did not immediately release information about the crash or identify the driver. <\/p>\n
North Strabane firefighters were assisted at the scene by crews from Chartiers Township, along with medics from Ambulance & Chair and Canonsburg Ambulance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This pickup truck careened off an Interstate 79 overpass at the Houston interchange in North Strabane Township on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57,251,112432],"class_list":["post-320726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-local-news","tag-washington-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}