Lorry driver Mark Faulkner walked alive from a huge explosion today after his tipper truck hit a 33,000-volt power cable.

Mark, 27, was delivering vegetables to a piggery in Horspath, near, Oxford, when the amazing accident happened.

The lucky truck driver told the

Oxford Mail how his lorry:

*STRUCK the overhead cable;

*ERUPTED in an explosion that lit up the cab "like the fourth of July"; and

*BLEW OUT four tyres.

Incredibly, Mark emerged unhurt from the explosion - and then dashed back to the cab to pick up his wage packet. He said: "I thought I was going to die because I thought the whole truck was going to blow up. It just happened so fast. I'm a very lucky person. It's the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Saturday so I might have a wager."

Mark had just finished dumping the vegetables at Horspath Piggeries, in Sandy Lane, when he pulled forward and hit the cable.

At least two pigs died from shock as a result of the blast.

Mark, who works for waste disposal firm Biffa and lives in High Wycombe, added: "The power jumped from the cable to the lorry and lit it up like the fourth of July." Piggery owner Michael Eadle said: "People would have heard it miles away. There were two huge bangs. It looked like the biggest disco you have ever seen in your life. The driver must be the luckiest man alive. I've told him to do the lottery."

He said that two men who had been in the main yard of the farm, near the power cable, tried to escape out of the back of a hay shed when they saw the explosion.

Mr Eadle said:

Graham Rayfield, team manager for Southern Electric, said: "It must have cut power off all over Wheatley for about 10 seconds. "The driver could well have been killed. The tyres probably saved him, and the fact that our main system trips out quickly."

Story date: Friday 12 March

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.