Truck narrowly avoids tumble on Crest

A Los Angeles Department of Water and Power truck teetered on the edge of a steep hillside in the Angeles National Forest last weekend after part of a fire road gave way underneath it.

La Cañada Flintridge resident Reg Green was out for a hike on Sunday when he spotted the truck about three quarters of a mile into the dirt path, which begins at a gate near the Angeles Crest Forest Fire Station roughly three miles above the city along Angeles Crest Highway.

Green noticed the truck’s front driver’s-side wheel was more than a foot off the ground as the rear passenger-side wheels balanced over the edge of a steep drop of more than 200 feet.

Had the truck tipped, “there would have been nothing to stop a freefall hundreds of feet all the way down that valley,” said Green, who returned Monday morning to find the truck had been removed from its precarious position.

A spokesperson for the L.A. Department of Water and Power said the truck was on its way to perform maintenance on department telecommunications equipment when part of the road gave way while it maneuvered a turn. No one was hurt, and DWP crews used a bulldozer to put the truck back on the road.