Damaged scrap metal truck shuts down traffic, causes power outage in San Jose

Traffic was shut down in a San Jose neighborhood Thursday after a scrap metal truck with a damaged axle was at risk of rolling over, according to fire officials.The San Jose Fire Department said the incident happened near South First Street and East Alma Avenue. The semi-truck, carrying 78,000 pounds of metal, did not fall over. The initial call about the truck came in at around 9:30 a.m. The driver was making a turn onto East Alma Ave. when it ran into trouble. There are no injuries related to this incident. Authorities said the truck was at risk of striking a nearby power pole if it overturned. As a precaution, Pacific Gas & Electric said just before 1:30 p.m. they were asked to shut off nearby power lines as a precautionary measure. The initial outages left as many as 6,900 customers without electricity for most of the afternoon, officials said. By 4 p.m., PG&E said 3,000 of those outages had been restored. The utility said they hoped the outages would be fully restored by around 5 p.m. Drew, who did not give his last name, was affected by the outage. "Everything went out and just had to keep going out to the…first we had to check if the bathroom died and then…power will coe back on before the food in fridge goes bad," he said. A Sacred Heart Community Service building in the area was evacuated while crews determine how to safely lift the truck. Two tow trucks have arrived at the scene to secure the semi-truck, PG&E said. One man saw the accident as it happened. "And then its axel broke right where it's at and then a lot of the metal just shot out to the floor and then I went and talked to the driver and he was looking at the broken parts and I said, ‘You best not move it an inch because if this tilts over, it’ll probably kill the power, probably kill the transformers,'" said Ramiro Ramos. Authorities have not said whether the semi-truck was involved in a crash or how the axle was damaged. That is under investigation.