Pittsburgh salt truck slides over South Side hill

The driver of a Pittsburgh salt truck somehow escaped injury when the truck went over a hillside Monday morning in the South Side Slopes neighborhood, a city official said.

The Department of Public Works truck was plowing and salting streets and went over the hillside on Mt. Oliver Street shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, according to Tim McNulty, a spokesman for Mayor Bill Peduto.

I’m off today, but when a Public Works snow plow slides over a hill a block from home... pic.twitter.com/xSKky19mko

— Megan Guza (@meganguzaTrib) February 1, 2021

The driver wasn’t hurt and city paramedics and police responded and are investigating what happened, McNulty said.

The truck appeared to have been coming down Proctor Way when it either could not stop or could not make the turn, instead dropping nearly straight down over a retaining wall and hillside. Streets in that area — the border between the Slopes and Allentown — has many steep, narrow streets, some of which are brick rather than paved.

The steep drop left the truck nearly vertical. Two cranes from McGann and Chester spent hours securing the truck before slowly and methodically pulling it back up over the hill.

The truck of was back on level ground around 12:30 p.m.

A weather system settled over Southwestern Pennsylvania on Sunday and has dropped snow across the area off and through Sunday and into Monday, and it’s expected to remain in the area through Tuesday.

A preliminary report by the National Weather Service in Moon posted around midnight suggested the facility received 4.5 inches of snow since the storm began early Sunday morning.

In Allegheny County, up to 2 inches was expected overnight into Monday. An additional inch could be recorded throughout the day, with less than an inch occurring Monday night.

City officials had 60 salt and plow trucks available Sunday, with public works crews working 12-hour shifts