When three men preparing food for a carnival at St. Paschal Baylon Catholic Church heard the sound of metal against metal last Sunday morning, they knew something bad had happened on the street nearby.

Remo Iezza, Henry Nagy and Joe Ruck looked out at the corner of Moorpark and Janss roads and saw that a gray Dodge pickup had sheared off a fire hydrant and wrapped around a traffic light pole, Ruck said.

"To get there fast, we had to climb over a wrought-iron fence that is about 8 feet tall. I'm over 6 feet tall and 250 pounds, and it wasn't easy. I got a cut on my leg and bruises," Ruck said.

A retired paramedic, Ruck said he didn't expect to find anyone alive in the truck because of how the wreckage looked.

"It's hard to describe how bad the truck looked. I couldn't tell, at first, if it was one or two vehicles. It looked like it had been shredded by a Cuisinart."

"It was a pretty spectacular crash," said Thousand Oaks Police Traffic Sgt. Robert Fleming. "The solo juvenile driver was going north on Moorpark Road at a high rate of speed when he lost control."

"We thought, there's no way anyone survived," Ruck said.

But when he and the others arrived at the scene at about 9:15 a.m., they found a 17-year-old boy alive with blood covering his face.

"When we found someone inside the vehicle alive, we felt such joy," Ruck said.

They didn't mind leaving the eggs, bacon and barbecue they were cooking for the church event or enduring the pain that came from climbing the fence. They did what they could to comfort and assist the boy until official help got to the scene, Ruck said.

"The water from the fire hydrant was pouring down on us like Niagara Falls."

An ambulance took the young man to Los Robles Hospital, where he was treated for minor injuries, Fleming said.

"He was not driving under the influence of alcohol. He was leaving a friend's house," said Dep. Jeff Oswald, the school resource officer at Thousand Oaks High School, who was at the crash scene.

The fire hydrant was sent flying northbound on Moorpark and landed about 100 feet away from where it had been bolted to the pavement. A tire from the truck flew across the street and landed in the Panda Express parking lot in the Vons Shopping Center.

"If there had been a passenger, the passenger would have been greatly injured," Fleming said.

"The passenger compartment was pretty damaged," Oswald said.

Witnesses who observed the accident said the truck was going about 80 miles an hour, Oswald said.

"It's not unusual for a new driver to be speeding and getting into a collision. Parents need to teach kids about the effects of driving fast," Oswald said.

He said that parents can have their children wait to get their driver's license until they're mature enough to take on the responsibility of driving.

They also can revoke their child's driver's license if it appears they aren't being responsible after they get their license, Oswald said.