Someone took two pieces of Alaska Department of Transportation equipment for a joyride near 19 Mile Haines Highway last week, lodging a street sweeper in the mud and then using an excavator to cover the street sweeper with dirt.
The equipment was parked near 19 Mile for clearing debris from the recurrent slides there, said DOT foreman Matt Boron. The keys were in the equipment.
The person, or people, who commandeered the machinery on Sept. 28 drove across the road, stuck the street-sweeper in the mud, and then poured the dirt on top of the cab using the excavator. The material broke a light and dented the cab, Boron said.
Troopers estimated the damage at $500.
In his 11 years working for DOT, Boron said he has never had a problem leaving the keys in equipment out the road. “Nobody has ever bothered anything until last weekend,” he said. “It just used to be that’s the town we lived in.”
“That was our mistake, I guess, leaving keys in stuff, but we never had to worry about it. But we do now,” he added.
The keys are being removed now, Boron said.
Boron reported the incident to troopers, but not because he expects law enforcement to find the culprit or culprits. “I knew there was no hope of ever catching anybody, but I wanted to document it for insurance purposes,” he said.