Runaway Bulldozer Rolls Over Sports Car, but Driver Survives

A man was trapped in the wreckage of his sports car for more than an hour after it was flattened by a runaway 75,000-pound bulldozer Thursday morning in Laguna Hills, but was reported in fair and stable condition at Mission Community Hospital in Mission Viejo.

“I couldn’t even believe the man was alive when I first saw the wreck,” California Highway Patrol spokesman Ken Daily said. “The car was a pancake, and he should have been one, too.”

Hospital attendants said the driver, Thomas Cooper, 60, of Laguna Niguel, suffered a fractured back--with no paralysis--and some chemical burns from spilled gasoline, which did not catch fire.

Daily said Cooper, driving a 1969 Porsche, had stopped for a traffic light at La Paz and Cabot roads and was preparing to turn right on Cabot. At the same time, a truck towing a low, flatbed trailer carrying a bulldozer was driving in the opposite direction on La Paz, climbing a moderately steep hill.

“About 50 or 60 yards up, the truck driver, Leon Thomas Baudot, 36, of Anaheim said he heard chains popping, and the bulldozer rolled backward off the trailer,” Daily said.

The monster machine crossed the center line, narrowly missed two other autos stopped for the light and slammed into Cooper’s car.

It rolled the sports car over and up onto the sidewalk, crushing it against a two-foot masonry wall surrounding a service station at the corner. Even then, the bulldozer didn’t stop, Daily said. Its rear wheels, six feet in diameter, carried it over the wall, where it knocked down the service station sign post and came to rest with its blade and front wheels resting on the upside-down Porsche.

The Porsche’s engine “just sort of squirted out into the street,” Daily said, and gasoline was pouring from the ruptured tank.

Orange County firefighters and paramedics washed down the fuel, and, working with power tools and their hands, spent the next 1 1/2 hours gingerly extracting Cooper. They said he seemed rational and calm and talked to rescuers throughout the ordeal.

Daily said the cause of the accident was being investigated.

Mike Yarborough, manager of the service station, said he “just happened to look up” in time to see the bulldozer rolling down the street.

“The guy in the Porsche--I don’t know his name, but I talk to him here at the station almost every day--well, I was sure he was dead. The whole thing made noises like you’ve never heard.”