BOISE CITY — Truck driver Pedro Bautista said he could feel the trailer dancing.
The 50-year-old driver from Florida has driven in miserable weather before and felt the trailer shimmy in protest but had always been able to steady the big rig. His experience just outside Boise City would be different.
This time, he ended up with other stranded travelers holed up at the St. Paul’s United Methodist Church.
"Man, I was going nice and slow,” he said Friday, explaining that he was just east of Boise City on U.S. 412. "There was a gust of wind. ... I could see nothing and I didn’t know where my tire was. Then I heard, ‘Boom!’”
Houston truck driver Oscar Sainz, 23, was driving right behind and saw the wind blow the nearly 80,000 pound tractor-trailer off the road. He said they tried chains to get the truck back on the road but both ended up stuck about 3 a.m. Friday.
"We’re ready to get out and dig out the truck and get out of here,” Sainz said.
By Friday afternoon, snow whirled and drifted as high as rooftops. Roads were shut down all around the city and the seven at the church grew to 12, plus two dogs.
Three of the travelers came in after hitchhiking an estimated 80 miles over a couple of weeks when Richard Hintz’s 1994 pickup gave up in Lebanon, Mo. He figured it couldn’t get much worse when he climbed into an old semi grain trailer with his girlfriend and Samoyed husky to spend the night Wednesday.
He was wrong.
"If it wasn’t for the help of this community, we would have most certainly died last night,” Hintz said. "If we had been left on the highway, we would have froze to death. I would personally like to thank the community of Boise City for this.”
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