31 Hurt in S.F. Cable Car-Truck Collision

SAN FRANCISCO — A crowded cable car making its descent on one of the city’s steepest hills crashed into a truck at an intersection Monday, injuring 31 people.

“It looked like something out of a war movie,” said Ray Landi, a fire division chief who said he arrived at the scene five minutes after the accident. “There were 10 to 12 people on the ground in various states of injuries, and one trapped under the front of the cable car.”

“The whole front of the cable car was missing,” said Dorothy Quate, a secretary who works nearby. “The seats were sitting right out there in the air.”

The cause of the crash, which occurred at 11:23 a.m. in a light rain, was under investigation.

Most of the injured were taken to hospitals, where they were treated for minor injuries and released. Rescue teams had to use two “Jaws of Life” devices to pry one victim from beneath the cable car. The victim, who was not identified, suffered a fractured leg and was later reported in stable condition at a hospital, officials said.

Among those most seriously injured, Lillian Schuttenberg, 64, of St. Charles, Mo., suffered a broken pelvis and wrist, and Carole Moorman, 24, broke her arm. A 68-year-old tourist from England broke his leg, and a 45-year-old Italian dislocated his shoulder.

The accident took place at the intersection of Hyde and Bay streets, near Fisherman’s Wharf.

“I was sitting inside when the brakeman said, ‘Hold on, hold on.’ I held on, then we hit,” Esther Breckenridge, 70, also of St. Charles, Mo., told the Associated Press. “I don’t ever want to go through anything like this again.”

Passengers on the cable car told reporters that it seemed to speed up as it approached the intersection at the bottom of the hill, but Municipal Railway officials said the car could not have been traveling faster than its normal top speed of 9 1/2 m.p.h.

They added that monitoring lights warning motorists of approaching cable cars appeared to have been functioning normally.

The car’s brakes were functioning but the rain may have made the cables slick and the car more difficult to stop, said Alan Siegel of the San Francisco Municipal Railway.

“The car did not derail,” Siegel said. “We’re not sure why the truck entered the intersection.”

The cable car operator, grip man Gerald Bolden, and the conductor, whose name was not released, were injured in the crash, Siegel said.

The driver of the Kingston Contracting Inc. Electrical Construction truck also suffered injuries and was treated at a hospital.

The accident was one of the worst since the cable cars began ferrying passengers up and down the city’s hills 115 years ago.

In 1967, 30 people were injured and two killed when a cable car went out of control and crashed at the bottom of the same hill. In 1984, a suicidal motorist smashed his car into a cable car, killing himself and injuring 23 passengers.

The cars were built to carry 30 people apiece, but frequently hold two to three times that number.