COLRAIN — The driver of a 10-wheel dump truck was transported to Baystate Franklin Medical Center following a crash on Jacksonville Road Friday afternoon that left the road temporarily closed.

According to Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Worden, the accident happened shortly before 3 p.m. He said the truck was heading northbound, descending the mountain on Greenfield Road when it lost its brakes, hitting a utility pole in front of a home at 6 Jacksonville Road, tipping over and losing the load of gravel it was transporting.

Worden said when the Colrain Fire Department and ambulance arrived, the man who was driving was already out of the truck. He was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, a lucky scenario according to Worden’s wife, fellow firefighter and emergency medical technician Colleen Worden.

Colleen Worden said when the truck hit the utility pole, she suspects the pole crashed through the windshield, making the driver “lucky he wasn’t decapitated.”

According to Kevin Worden, Jacksonville Road from the Town Common to the Vermont border will be temporarily closed for at least three or four hours after the crash, meaning it could reopen at 6 p.m. at the earliest.

In the meantime, Eversource is working to re-erect the power lines, as the utility pole was snapped in half. Kevin Worden said State Police will also respond to investigate and the Fire Department will clean up spilling fluids before the road can be reopened.

On the other side of the bridge within eyeshot of the accident, Kevin Worden said the Halifax, Vermont, Fire Department is blocking off traffic and has been directed to respond to any emergencies in Colrain north of the bridge.

The road, the Wordens agreed, has been plagued by similar accidents for years. Trucks coming down the mountain have been known to crash into the porch at the 6 Jacksonville Road home, and before it was demolished, a building at the corner of Main Road and Jacksonville Road.

“It always used to be called the truck stop,” Kevin Worden said of the demolished building. He remembers six such accidents since 1960, and Colleen Worden recalled accidents for three years on Mother’s Day weekend that most frequently involved heavy trucks.

In this case, the dump truck toppled only a short distance from the porch at 6 Jacksonville Road, surprising new homeowner Michelle Wait, who was sleeping before her night shift.

“It woke me out of a sound sleep,” Wait said.

Having moved in only a week ago, it was Wait’s first time witnessing such an accident, but she’d heard stories about how her property had been involved before, retrieving an old photo from May 28, 1999, that showed a truck after it smashed into her porch.

“It was the same scenario,” she said. “It (was) even a red truck!”

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