A large truck on Friday morning crashed into Becker’s Bakery & Deli, a 100-year-old historical landmark in downtown Manhattan Beach.
Moments before 9:30 a.m., owner Todd Becker and his eight employees were “milling about” inside the popular bakery — on the intersection of Manhattan Avenue and 11th Street — when they heard a “sonic boom” and subsequently felt the building shake violently.
“It was very scary,” Becker recalled an hour later. “It was so loud I thought the final earthquake was here.”
Outside, a small semi truck had crashed into the bakery’s side brick wall, where on the other side sat a mother and her young daughter, Becker said. From the back, Jamie Brydon, a one-year employee, saw part of the roof go through the white truck.
‘The brick wall is pretty strong,” Becker said. If the bricks weren’t there, he noted, the situation would have turned out very differently.
Nobody, including the truck driver, was injured in the crash, Manhattan Beach police Sgt. Steve Kitsios said, adding that the structural damage to the building will be negotiated between the two private parties, he added.
The police are attributing the crash to mechanical failure.
The truck, from a fine custom cabinet business, lost its brakes while traveling westbound on 11th Street. As the truck careened down the road, the driver consciously decided to crash his vehicle into the brick wall–a logical decision, Becker noted, as cars, homes and pedestrians occupied the final block before the beach.
Eric Martin of the Roundhouse Aquarium was surfing near the site when he heard “something like a bomb go off.” Back at the site, he pointed out a electrical pole a few feet away from the point of impact. Had the truck hit that pole, all of downtown would like have lost power.
“It was a bad fright for the 13th that turned into a good one because no one got hurt,” Martin said.
Becker’s Bakery & Deli has remained open for business since the crash.
