Rescuers Free 2 Injured Women Trapped in Car Battered by Truck : Accident: Police say brakes may have failed on vehicle that came down Interstate 5 off-ramp, ran red light and plowed into intersection.

Working feverishly with special tools, it took firefighters 42 minutes to pull two seriously injured South County women from their mangled car Monday after it was hit by an out-of-control trailer-truck filled with 80,000 pounds of sand, authorities said.

Gloria Roberts, 47, of Mission Viejo, and her mother, Gloria Klocke, 82, of San Clemente, received broken bones and cuts in the 10 a.m. accident in the 500 block of Avenida Pico. They were listed in serious condition in the intensive care ward at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo.

Klocke suffered a broken rib and internal injuries while Roberts sustained a concussion, broken pelvis and cuts.

“They were very fortunate to survive,” Lt. Dan Martini of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said. “That’s a lot of force coming down on them.”

The women were stopped at a signal, waiting to turn right onto Interstate 5, when the double trailer truck came down the off-ramp, ran a red light and plowed into the intersection, according to Martini.

The truck glanced off one car and then broadsided the Mercedes Benz driven by Roberts, according to police reports and witnesses.

“It happened about five feet in front of me,” said Jonathan Robbins, 35, a hitchhiker from Lompoc who was standing on the curb, waiting for a ride. “I saw the truck slam into the Mercedes, spin it around and hit it again. . . . I knew somebody had to be hurt bad.”

Robbins said he ran over to the car window and saw the women trapped inside. Roberts was uprooted from her seat and wound up in the back seat, according to a firefighter.

“They were starting to move and I told them to try and stay where they are,” Robbins said. “Then I screamed ‘somebody get some help, please!’ ”

Ian Doyle, 43, of San Clemente, the driver of the first car hit by the truck, said he was traveling west on Pico past the off-ramp when the truck roared through the intersection and hit the front of his car.

“All of a sudden the truck was right in front of me,” said Doyle, whose finger was broken in the crash. “It appeared that he ran the light. He hit me and then I didn’t see what happened after that.”

The truck driver is a 34-year-old Garden Grove man who was not identified. Martini said he was not cited pending the outcome of an investigation.

A preliminary report from the California Highway Patrol indicated that the truck’s brakes failed as it was descending the steep off-ramp, Martini said.

“There are two possibilities, either it was a mechanical failure, the brakes or whatever, or driver error,” said Martini, who added that it could take several weeks for the investigation to be completed.