An out-of-control mobile crane, heading downhill. A busy downtown Tacoma street. An offramp from Interstate 705. And the end of the lunch hour on a pleasant spring Friday.

But when the crane finally stopped after crashing into a concrete barrier, everybody was fine.

“That was nothing but a herd of guardian angels” guiding the crane downhill, said Desa Gese Conniff, who along with Bill Beecher, his partner in a downtown law firm, saw the incident.

The Mountain Construction crane took out several trees, signs and light poles along South 15th Street in its jaunt down the hill about 1 p.m., but that appeared to be the extent of the damage.

“No injuries,” said Tacoma police spokesman Mark Fulghum. “It’s just a big mess.”

The accident happened after the crane lost power and the crew lost control of the vehicle, Fulghum said.

“We’re not sure if it was the brakes or steering or what it was,” he said.

Representatives of Mountain Construction couldn’t be reached Friday evening.

The crane driver started to lose control at South 15th and Fawcett Avenue, said Tacoma fire Lt. David Elmer. At some point, the driver bailed out when he realized the brakes were gone, Elmer said.

Conniff and Beecher were in a car, waiting to turn left at South 15th and Commerce streets.

“We had heard a horn,” Conniff said. “We didn’t see anything at first. Then we saw the crane coming down the hill.”

The crane started knocking down trees along the side of the road. Conniff said it looked like the driver was trying to slow the machine down.

That didn’t work.

The crane, smoke coming from the engine compartment, swerved into what would have been oncoming traffic had there been any on South 15th.

“It rolls right down the hill past us with not one single car going up the hill,” Conniff said. “All the cars on Pacific were stopped” for a red light.

David Nicandri, director of the Washington State History Museum, was just ending his lunch break and standing near South 15th and Pacific Avenue when the crane came rolling by.

“I was just 6 feet from being at the corner of 15th and Pacific,” he said.

A young man on another corner was waving and shouting at people to get out of the way.

“There was an unsung hero in all of this,” Nicandri said. “He could see it coming down the hill. He was getting the attention of people at the intersection.”

Nicandri said no one was at the I-705 offramp or in the intersection when the crane came screaming through.

“It was wild,” he said. “And the noise was just unbelievable. It looked like a spindly monster coming down the hill.”

The crane came to rest on the freeway offramp, which crews closed for several hours while the incident was investigated and cleaned up.

“It was unbelievable,” Conniff said.

Stacey Mulick: 253-597-8268

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