Emergency personnel respond to the scene after a tractor trailer drifted off Interstate 90 and landed on Harris Hill Road early Saturday morning. The driver was injured, but no other vehicles were involved in the accident. A tractor trailer driver was hospitalized early Saturday morning after a sneezing attack led him to drift off the Harris Hill Road overpass of Interstate 90, causing an accident that left the street blocked for nearly half a day and about 150 residents without power for several hours.

Jason Leber, 28, of Niagara Falls, was traveling west on the interstate around 6:45 a.m. when the sneezing fit occurred, causing the truck to knock down a guard rail, crash through a retaining fence and travel down an embankment before bursting into flames, according to State Police.

Firefighters with the Bowmansville Fire Co. extinguished the blaze, and Leber was taken by the Lancaster Volunteer Ambulance Corps to the Erie County Medical Center, Buffalo, where he was listed in critical condition.

Passersby were able to help Leber out of the burning vehicle before firefighters arrived, Bowmansville Fire Co. Chief Thomas J. Trzepacz said.

“He was laying on the side of the road by the time I got there,” Trzepacz said.

He added that the trailer knocked down a power pole as it traveled down the embankment, which caused the power outage. The truck came to rest across all lanes of Harris Hill Road, blocking the street for about 10 hours.

“The trailer was about 95 percent across the road,” Trzepacz said.

No other vehicles were involved in the crash of the trailer, which is owned by Estes Trucking Co. of Morrisville, N.C., according to State Police.

“It would have been very bad if that had happened during rush hour in the morning or afternoon,” Trzepacz said.

e-mail: LJohnson@beenews.com