I had thought last week that this was a year where I wouldn’t see a major accident by our house. Wrong. At about 3:15 there was a crash noise. 5 minutes later there were emergency vehicles all over. A semi had crashed leaving town. It looks as if it took out the guardrails and traveled about 2/3’s of the way across the bridge length on the cement barriers. I can see better now. It looks like about a third of the cab (passenger side) is over the river. There were about a dozen emergency vehicles there the first hour. At 4:15 they had portable flood lights up. There is enough fog that something the distance from me to the wreak is visible, but not crystal clear. I’m looking from our yard. At 5:15 preparation for unloading the trailer is underway. At 5:30 the rental trucks are here.
I’ve been watching channel 4 all morning with no report either. Probably not an injury accident.
I usually watch Fox 6 though for the Nicole Koglin factor.
It was a two vehicle accident. I couldn’t see too well with the fog and sun interacting. A semi hauling a trailer was leaving town and the trailer was setting on the road fairly straight in the proper lane. The semi cab must have been forced to to the left at impact managing to not be a direct head on collision. A large milk truck was in the same lane (wrong lane) headed toward town and it’s cab was wedged onto the bridge barriers (railing) and the front of the other trailer.
Some pictures will follow later. They are not super, but the best I could get for how close I could go.The pictures for the trailer are not good. Once it gets to the milk truck which was that last pictures it’s better.
The mods can change semi to Milk truck if they like to make it clearer.
They still have the highway closed off. Currently a waste clean up crew is cleaning the highway. I don’t think there was spilled milk, only nasty diesel on the bridge.
Here are 3 pictures. I annotated the first one. Pictures
A couple minutes after 10:00 the road was opened. It was only closed for 7 hours.
I was up at 2:00 because of something and was just going to bed again when the crash happened. I’m a bit tired.
The milk truck looks to me to be the sole cause by being in the wrong lane.
There was a logging semi with two empty trailers stuck there for over an hour before he could back up and leave. I don’t know if he could have done that loaded. He was also parked in the left lane at the accident so I don’t know if he pulled up that far on purpose or if he just stopped in time. The tank part of the milk truck was blocking that lane. It could have been a lot worse. The diesel fuel started to go to the river, so i don’t know if that drainage area soil will be contaminated. I see that it leaked again near the canal bridge when being towed. There was absorbent material on the road there.
Both drivers are OK. The semi trailer had large rolls of paper in it. One stopped in the cab’s sleeper compartment. I took a picture of the last paper removed on the flatbed that followed the milk truck being towed. That semi cab looked like I figured. I never had it visible to me for I could take a picture. They will be removing contaminated soil next week.
This was a horrible accident that somehow didn’t seriously injure or kill someone. Just like the guy that sheared off the power pole and traveled over a hundred feet in front of our house two years ago without having any serious injuries. We had a semi flip upside down in the neighbor’s yard and remain running. Our house was full of relatives for a celebration at the time and we saw a semi flash by the picture window. No people got hit or their cars, and the semi driver was OK. We’ve had many serious accidents over the decades within half a block of our house and the people are never killed. Most if not all accidents they have minor or no injuries.
There is a large curve that you could do at least 75 mph on and stay on it, then the bridge at the bottom of a hill. They engineered this area well when they straightened the river and cut through the hill to put in the hwy and city sewer plant. The milk truck was on the inside lane of that curve during the accident, so speed didn’t make him drift. I’d say it was more of the fact that it was early in the morning and somebody shouldn’t have been driving. The driver refused to go to the hospital for treatment. Was he afraid of them finding something against him?
