Freeway Motorist Killed by Falling Iron Pipe : Accident: Tubes weighing up to a ton each break loose from flatbed truck and rain down from overhead transition ramp.

Iron pipes 30 feet long and weighing up to a ton each rained down on the Golden State Freeway from an overhead transition ramp Tuesday afternoon, and one of them chopped a car almost in half, crushing the driver’s head and killing him.

Two people were injured in the freak accident at the point in the northeastern San Fernando Valley where the Golden State, Foothill and Antelope Valley freeways intersect.

The pipes broke loose from a flatbed truck on the transition ramp from the Foothill Freeway. Eight to 10 of them plunged about 45 feet onto the Golden State and Antelope Valley freeways packed with rush-hour traffic, knocking off cement chunks from an intermediate transition ramp as they fell.

“All I could hear was pipes and concrete all around me,” said Gary Payne, 43, of Valencia, who was driving on the intermediate ramp, sandwiched between the upper ramp and the freeway. “I don’t know how I made it through.”

One of the pipes, which authorities said were about 18 to 20 inches in diameter and weighed about 1,500 to 2,000 pounds apiece, slammed into a white Oldsmobile Bravada, knocking off the car’s roof, witnesses said.

“The pipe just sheared it off and opened it like a can of sardines,” said Jack Gastil of Canyon Country, who was driving his van behind the victim’s vehicle in the right lane of the northbound Golden State Freeway.

The impacted car bounced off the concrete center divider of the freeway before coming to a rest on its side in the right-hand lanes. The driver’s head was crushed, Gastil said.

“It was obvious he was dead,” he added.

The dead man’s identity was not made public pending notification of his family.

Gastil’s van sustained minor front-end damage and he said he was not hurt.

The accident occurred at about 4:15 p.m., said Officer John Manduca of the California Highway Patrol. The northbound side of the Golden State Freeway was closed for several hours, backing up rush-hour traffic for miles on surrounding roads.

The pipes fell from a large flatbed truck on the transition ramp from the westbound Foothill Freeway to the southbound Golden State, Manduca said. Straps or chains holding a load of about 20 of the pipes broke, he said, and many of them rolled or bounced over the side of the transition ramp, which arcs high over the freeway.

“The driver is usually responsible for tying down his own load,” said Manduca, who said the accident was still under investigation.

The driver could not immediately halt his truck as the pipes began rolling off, Manduca said, and that was why they were dropped over such an extensive area.

Many of them fell past another elevated ramp, which passes under the upper ramp but above the Golden State Freeway, from the southbound Golden State to the eastbound Foothill freeway.

Several vehicles on the intermediate ramp were hit by debris, but only two people were treated for injuries.

Payne said he was driving his pickup truck on the northbound Antelope Valley freeway when out of the corner of his eye he saw the pipes falling at him. He escaped injury by speeding up, he said, but his front windshield was smashed and the sides of his truck dented--although he isn’t sure just what struck his vehicle.

Two of the pipes landed on the intermediate ramp where Isidro Fernandez, 30, of Portersville, was clutching his heart in pain as he sat on the tailgate of his pickup truck after a narrow escape.

“I saw that pipe coming down and I thought it was going to hit the front of the windshield,” he said. “I just slammed on the gas.”

Fernandez was taken to a hospital for treatment of his heart pains, Manduca said. The driver of a Toyota pickup truck on the northbound Golden State was also hospitalized with moderate injuries after concrete hit his vehicle, causing him to swerve into the center divider.

Officials closed the northbound Golden State and the transition from the westbound Foothill freeway to the southbound Golden State while the accident was investigated and cleared.

Northbound rush-hour traffic backed up beyond the Simi Valley Freeway, five miles to the south, and freeways and surface roads throughout the area had similar backups.

Manduca said he expected the freeway to remain closed for up to four hours, but portions would be reopened as the pipes and wreckage were cleared.

The death and injury toll could have been much worse, given the volume of rush-hour traffic and the number of pipes that fell, said Milton Vrquilla , a spokesman for the Los Angeles City Fire Department.

“For something like this at this time of the day and for the size of these pipes, we’re lucky we didn’t have more damage than we do now,” he said.

Above the roadway several hours later, the semi-trailer flatbed truck sat empty on the left side of the transition road, with debris from the truck’s bed. Splintered wood and black dirt lined the right side of the road.

By 7:15 p.m., Caltrans workers were using a front-end loader to remove the pipe from the northbound side of the freeway to clear the road.

Chuck Webster, a Caltrans regional manager who was supervising the cleanup, said the freeway would remain open until crews began working above the main road, knocking loose chunks of concrete from the transition roads as well as removing sections of mangled guardrail hit as the pipe fell from the truck.