Highway 30 blocked after accident at Gnat Creek
Updated at 10:46 a.m.
U.S. Highway 30 was closed for a while this morning 18 miles east of Astoria after a serious accident near the entrance to the Gnat Creek Fish Hatchery.
The 7 a.m. crash involved a Honda Civic and a loaded log truck.
Roger Warren, manager of the Gnat Creek Fish Hatchery, said the crash sounded like an explosion. He ran from his house to see what had happened.
"The car was completed demolished. I couldn't believe anybody survived it," Warren said. But all three occupants did survived, he said. "They were all very, very lucky," he said.
Warren said a teenage boy who had been in the front passenger seat was standing outside the car complaining of back pain. But the woman driver and a girl in the back seat were sitting motionless with undetermined injuries, waiting for paramedics to arrive with backboards, he said.
The wreck happened near the bridge where the road narrows at the entrance to the hatchery. Warren said the car was headed toward Astoria when the driver lost control as she came down the hill toward a narrow bridge. The car spun backwards onto the the bridge, just as the log truck was coming onto the bridge.
He said the car went under the truck backwards, and hit the truck's reach, a metal beam underneath it, which caused the trailer's wheels to go toward the bridge railing. There was a loud scraping noise, he said, as the trailer hit the guard rail.
Meanwhile, the car continued sliding, coming to rest at the west end of the bridge, just west of the hatchery entrance. Warren said a Clatsop County Sheriff's deputy happened to be driving right behind the log truck and soon ambulances arrived from both directions.
The log truck driver was not injured and did not lose his load of logs.
Warren said in the 10 years he has lived at the hatchery there have been 20 accidents there. He urged motorists to remember that in cold weather. "When you leave Knappa, there's always ice on the hill." he said.
Oregon State Police expected the highway to reopen for at least one-lane traffic around 10:15 a.m.