By Joe Anuta
The city Sanitation Department was still investigating Tuesday how a 15.5-ton Sanitation truck smashed through the brick wall of a Maspeth maintenance garage last week and was left dangling three floors above 52nd Road with the driver still inside.
Robert Legall, 56, was trapped in the cab as it hung suspended over the road and horrified coworkers shouted at him from the other side of the massive hole in the wall, according to eyewitnesses.
At 9:28 a.m., Legall, a 10-year Sanitation veteran, was pulling a large, orange, salt-spreading truck into a parking space on the third floor of a city Sanitation repair facility to perform a checkup, according to Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty, who arrived at the scene after the accident.
The truck then plowed through a brick wall the morning of Aug. 17, showering cars and street below with debris.
Three-fourths of the truck made it through the hole in the wall and, as it tipped downward, it wedged itself against the ceiling with Legall still behind the wheel.
“He’s lucky he didn’t go through the windshield,” Doherty said.
Ladder 163 responded within five minutes, according to FDNY Chief Joseph Pfeifer, the citywide tour commander, and crews raised a bucket ladder up and retrieved Legall.
Eyewitnesses, who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak to reporters, said Legall collapsed as he got into the bucket. He complained of chest and back pain, but was not seriously injured and was taken to Elmhurst Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition, according to Pfeifer.
Nearly 100 bystanders, police officers and firefighters were in awe at the enormous vehicle sticking out of the wall, with many saying it looked like a scene out of a movie. A workman’s table was also dangling outside the crash site next to the truck.
A chain was attached to the Sanitation truck and was hooked to two tow trucks on the fifth floor to secure the vehicle.
A crane was called to lift the front of the truck so it can be pulled back into the building.
“Nobody was injured,” the commissioner said. “That is the life-saving thing that happened today.”
Other of the city’s strongest were milling around outside as the large crane was brought in.
One worker said Legall was cleaning the inside windshield of the truck and stepped on the gas, sending it though the wall, but this could not be independently confirmed.
A spokesman for the department said the city was still looking into the cause of the accident and Legall had passed a Breathalyzer and urine test.
Doherty said the truck would not have had to be going at an excessive rate of speed to break through the wall, but others said it could have been traveling as slow as 5 mph.
According to one worker, many of men who owned cars crushed by fallen bricks usually would have been on break reading in their cars.
Instead, the worker said, they were out helping another worker finish a job, and complaining that they were not back at the shop.
The truck is used by the city Correction Department to spread salt at Rikers Island and is brought to the maintenance facility for repairs from time to time.
Reach reporter Joe Anuta by e-mail at januta@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
