Truck loses large logs negotiating sharp turn

Idaho state Sen. John Goedde was in his Coeur d’Alene office around 7 a.m. Monday when he heard and felt a rumble like a small earthquake.

“I was just working at my desk and the earth moved,” said Goedde, an insurance broker.

He walked outside to find that a log truck making a sharp turn on U.S. Highway 95 dumped a load of large-diameter logs on the lawn of the commercial condominium housing Hope Realty, Panhandle Insurance and Columbia Valuations.

“One log actually rolled up against the building, but it rolled up softly enough that it didn’t even dent the cedar siding,” said Goedde, president of the condominium association.

It’s not the first time a driver has had problems negotiating the 90-degree, no-stop turn on the highway at Lincoln Way and West Walnut Avenue, less than a mile south of Interstate 90.

“We built the building in the late 1980s, and this is the second time that I’m aware of that we’ve had logs in our yard,” Goedde said. “Not too long ago someone missed the corner and sheared a telephone pole off in front of our building.”

The logs, bound for a mill in Chilco, rolled across a sidewalk and damaged landscaping, lighting and a sign below the 18-foot wingspan of an eagle statue atop Hope Realty.

No one was injured. “We were fortunate,” said Debe Sohrweide, who owns Hope Realty with her husband, Paul.

“It’s a really nasty corner,” she said. “There’s a lot of accidents that happen there.”

The truck driver for Danielson Logging Inc. of St. Maries was cited for faulty brakes, said Cpl. Mike Johnson of the Idaho State Police.

“We’ve had several crashes there,” Johnson noted. “We’ve had several (wood) chip trucks turned over at the same exact corner.”

The Idaho Transportation Department has no current plans to change anything about the tricky three-way intersection, a spokesman said Monday.