SPICER -- Emergency personnel rescued the driver of a cement truck which had slid backward down a steep embankment Thursday morning, struck a tree and landed almost completely upside down onto Nest Lake northwest of Spicer.
Joseph L. Knopps, 45, of New London, was trapped in the cab of the truck for an hour. He was able to stay above the water while rescuers worked to free him in temperatures just a few degrees above zero.
Knopps told his rescuers that he was suffering considerable pain in his lower back and left side of his body as they worked to free him.
He was transported by air ambulance to the Hennepin County Medical Center for treatment. A nursing supervisor there reported his condition as stable late Thursday afternoon.
The drama unfolded around 9:30 a.m. as the driver for Duininck Brothers Companies of Prinsburg delivered a load of cement to a house construction site just a few doors down from the Willow Bay Resort on the south shore of the lake. Knopps was backing the truck up to pour cement for the basement of the house, according to workers at the site who said they were with Olson Masonry.
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One of the workers, Jeremy Miller, said he and others tried to alert the driver that the truck was on the verge of going over the edge of the steep embankment and should stop.
"There was quite a lot of yelling,'' said Steven Lease, a co-worker.
The workers said they weren't sure whether the driver heard their shouts. They said it appeared that he may have initially hit the wrong pedal.
Once the driver hit the brakes, the momentum of the 10 cubic yards of cement sloshing in the barrel -- weighing an estimated 30,000 pounds -- apparently kept the truck moving, said Lease and others.
The workers said they watched as the truck started sliding backward down the steep embankment. It picked up speed on the slick, snow-covered surface. It struck a tree just above the shoreline, which caused it to turn sideways and tip upside down as it crashed through the lake ice along the shoreline.
Rescuers from emergency teams in New London-Spicer, Willmar and the Kandiyohi County Sheriff's Department joined to extricate the driver from the crushed cab. They used winches to pull the nearly upside down truck on to its side and keep Knopps out of the water and aid their efforts to reach him.
Once he was removed from the truck, the rescuers pulled him in a sled along the shoreline to an ambulance on shore. He was transported to an air ambulance helicopter already waiting on the roadway.
