Depends of whether or not Takisawa used a Fanuc drive for the spindle or something from another manufacturer. Vintage of the machine has a lot to do with that. Prior to the early 80s, Fanuc did not make spindle drives and motors above 20-25HP so builders had to use someone else for bigger machines. The interfacing of errors or alarms between components from different manufacturers varies widely. AC versus DC also makes a difference. A DC field wound motor can easily run away if the field voltage control circuit malfunctions.
In the end the guy's story could be true. As often as not I've seen similar tales be the result of using CSS (G96) and not putting in a G50 S____ to limit the maximum speed to something reasonable for the workpiece and facing in to X0 or canceling tool offset combined with an X0.