WESTFIELD – A water department worker narrowly escaped injury Monday after the tractor he was operating flipped over.
Police received a call just before 3:30 Monday afternoon of an accident at Ponders Hollow Road.
Joseph Lambert of Westfield was driving a John Deere tractor along the bike trail when he lost control of the vehicle, which rolled down the embankment and landed in a ditch approximately 100 feet from the roadway, Westfield Police Capt. Michael McCabe said Tuesday.
Francis Cain, deputy superintendent of the Westfield Water Department, said that Lambert, 39, managed to jump off the tractor as it started going over.
Lambert was exiting the gate to the bike trail when he got too close to the edge and the ground gave way, Cain said.
According to Cain, Lambert went to a Workers’ Compensation clinic in Holyoke to be checked out and was found to be uninjured. A drug test was administered, which is standard procedure, said Cain.
The tractor did not fair so well and suffered thousands of dollars worth of damage.
“It is pretty banged up,” Cain said, “but we think we’ll be able to salvage it.”
Interstate Towing retrieved the vehicle from the ditch and towed it back to the Water Department.
The Water Department is responsible for mowing thousands of acres of watershed property, according to Cain.
Monday’s mowing along the trail was actually an experiment, he said, to see whether their equipment could be used to mow along the edge of the bike trail. Other than this accident, their equipment worked well.
Staff Writer Christine Charnosky can be reached at [email protected]
