[Vision2020] Truck Drops 172-Ton Ship Engine, Crushes Cars

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (July 26, 2007) Daily News Roundup Edition of the Army Times --

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Truck drops 172-ton ship engine, crushes cars

By Gidget Fuentes - Army Times Staff writer

SAN DIEGO - Talk about a close call.

A 172-ton diesel engine destined for a Navy cargo ship under construction
rolled off the back of a trailer early Thursday and crushed three cars
parked outside a shipyard entrance, authorities said.

A woman waiting in one of the crushed vehicles narrowly escaped serious
injury, police said.

"She's awful lucky," Sgt. Jeff Fellows of the San Diego Police Department's
traffic division said Thursday.

Accident investigators were studying the scene at 28th Street and Harbor
Drive, one of the entrances to the General Dynamics/National Steel and
Shipbuilding Co. shipyard. The site is near the commissary-exchange complex
and is several blocks north of the heavily trafficked main gate into Naval
Base San Diego.

The engine was being hauled on a flatbed trailer that "was negotiating
around a street light, and the thing just, quote, fell off," Fellows said.

The impact of the engine crushed the vehicles and cut a crater into the
street and curb, damaging an underground water pipe. A heavy crane will be
brought in to remove the engine and the vehicles - an undertaking that will
close Harbor Drive to traffic for up to 48 hours, Fellows said - and the
follow-on road and water pipe repair is expected to tie up traffic near that
intersection for some time.

"It's a big problem, and the city is going to get it done as soon as it's
possible," he said.

The engine was being delivered for one of the dry cargo/ammunition ships -
also known as T-AKE ships - under construction at the NASSCO shipyard,
spokesman Karl Johnson said.

The cause of the accident is under investigation, Johnson said.

The shipyard, located along the waterfront next to the naval base, has been
bustling with work on the T-AKE program. The company so far is on track to
build nine of the 12 combat logistics ships eyed under the $3.7 billion
T-AKE program.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)