The truck was HUGE. It was an 18 wheeler semi whose driver had lost his way after diverting from the Rte 80 traffic jam (due to another jack-knifed tractor trailer) and had found himself winding his truck through Hackettstown and up Schooley's Mountain Road at the 8 o'clock morning hour. Having pulled aside at least twice in attempts to get some bearings and find a way off our small roads that he quickly recognized as unfit for a rig his size, he found himself atop our mountain with no where else to go but down into the Valley. Creeping along with the middle school buses and rush hour traffic backing up impatiently behind him, he stared ahead at the too-steep decline before him and applied the brakes as best he could to control his 35+ ton load. As he approached the sharp left-turn curve in the road, he felt the rig give a little too easily, and he knew immediately that the stress on his brakes had been too much...they were about to fail him at the very worst possible moment. Pulling as hard as he could on the steering wheel, he slammed his foot deeper onto the now non-responsive brake pedal, and entered Dead Man's Curve with very little hope and way too much speed...
Seaver and his brother were surprised to see their 8:23 LVMS bus arrive on time. Because theirs was the last stop before the school, the bus was usually about 10 or 15 minutes late, having picked up a full load of students as it wound its way up and down through the mountain neighborhoods before heading to the middle school. But today, it arrived right on time. Seaver's mom had scolded them more than once to "stand and wait away from the curb" because the road is so busy during pick-up time...but, as usual, the boys were waiting right at the edge to jump on the bus as the yellow flashing lights appeared and all traffic magically stopped for them. Quickly, they crossed the street, boarded the school bus, and settled into their seats, clicking on their seat belts as they joked with each other about how they might have missed the bus this time because it "came so early!" But their words were barely out of their mouths when they heard a terrible noise--that horrific sound of metal screeching against unforgiving rock--and felt a huge shadow come over their backs just as the school bus slowly began to pull forward...
At the very moment that the fully loaded 18 wheeler semi tractor trailer overturned and slid out of Dead Man's Curve on its side, the children were stepping onto their bus and all oncoming traffic was stopped. By the time the semi had skidded down the mountain and was sliding directly toward the bus stop, the unaware school bus was just pulling away such that the back of the bus was "just clipped" by the front edge of the advancing rig. As the momentum of its 70,000+ lbs load careened the huge lorry toward the line of homes, the top of the cab hit the only large power-line post in the immediate vicinity, which sliced off the cab's roof and slowed the rig's descent, jamming itself between the overturned cab and its trailer. The remainder of the truck swung backward and came to rest along the line of trees that protected the homes on that side.
Except for some minor cuts and bruises to his leg, the driver was unhurt. The bus' involvement was so minor that it made it to the school before I had even left the LVMS parking lot at 8:29am.
By the way, at the last moment, instead of dropping off my son and heading home, we decided to talk a bit in the parking lot--9 minutes to be exact. Had I dropped him off and left as I had originally planned, I would have been heading up the mountain toward the curve at the same moment that the truck was coming down.
How perfect is the timing of the Lord.
