10/27/2004: Fuel tanker crash melts bridge

xoxoxoBruce points to this group of photos from Ernie's House of Whoopass. This fuel tanker crashed and burned at one of Alabama's busiest highway interchanges during morning rush hour. Truck didn't handle the curve, overturned, and... WHOOM. Right under the bridge it all went up, creating a fire so hot that it literally melted the damn bridge. It's at the intersection of Interstates 20/59 and 65, now intersected a little more closely. They'll have to demolish and rebuild that, or at least lower the weight limit to one stout guy on a bicycle.



Almost nothing left of the truck!



Seven more images at EHOWA.

Bad year for melted bridges. Same thing happened in CT back in March, causing quite the traffic nightmare for weeks afterwards.

I'm surprised that hasn't happened at the I-95/I-64/I-195 interchange area in Richmond, VA. That whole loop-de-loop is a bloody mess, especially if you're trying to get onto on I-195 from I-95 south. There's a lot of blind curves in the throughlanes.

I wish there was a way for me to use these images in class tonight!

suddenly I am craving a s'more...

A couple years ago in Springfield, MA, an LPG truck caught fire under I-95. They were affraid to try towing or even go near it for fear of setting off an explosion. They let it burn itself out. It only took a day and a half.

Didn't this happen in Delaware a few years back? Burned ON the bridge, not under it. And tangentially related, there was the I-95 tire fire which destroyed the highway.

Down in the OC a few years ago a truck was carying hay for one of the theme parks. The load on the trailer caught fire but the driver didn't notice and drove for miles with a burning load of hay. The burning hay blew into the underbrush along the highway igniting miles of the I-5. The driver finally stopped when the fire reached the cab.

I got a public safety page today regarding a hazardous materials incident at one of our nearby turnpike interchanges ... what was the hazardous material you may wonder? Fuel? Benzene? That acid that dripped out of the Alien if you managed to somehow hurt it?

Nope.

20,000 gallons of ... milk.

I don't know anything further about the incident, but some overtired, undertrained truckdriver must have hit the ramp too fast and lost control in one of our infamous decreasing radius turns ...

Each picture is perfect for those who love the emotion attached to an event. That's not me. Why did this crash occur? What was the mistake he made so that all others never make that mistake again?

For example, where is the hole where that tanker crashed off the bridge? If it crashed off before the bridge and down the grass embankment, then why are the lower roadway guardrails intact? If this roadway has a sharp curve, then where is that curve?

In short, the pictures were taken from the perspective of hype and not from the perspective of facts. That, unfortunately, is what too many do - especially news reporters. I have no problem with rubberneckers slowing down to look at a crash IF and only IF it results in people learning not to make that mistake. Yes, I am rare. I don't like hype. I want to see every gory detail complete with blood and the dying face IF it provides significant fact. I want to see those gory details so that others don't censure important information.

Unfortunately these truck crash pictures are woefully short of information other than how seriously a bridge can be damaged by 5000 gallons of gasoline.


Some decades ago, a tanker was driving up the Schulkyll Expressway from NJ. A support member to trailer rear suspension broke free. The trailer continued on - no one warning him that a strut was dragging on the road. That strut caught the pavement when the truck was under/adjacent to 30th Street Station - the Amtrak and Septa rail station for Philadelphia. Fortunately the truck just emerged from 30th Street before the trailer upended creating a same type of fire.

IOW this story is probably little known because a big hype event did not happen. However those who are concerned with reality see no difference from this event AND what would have happened had the trailer upended under/adjacent to 30th Street Station. We are suppose to learn from events - not be enthralled by a 'cool' picture.

Recently, I smelled something familiar. So I changed direction to follow the smell. Caught up with a trailer where the brakes had locked and were in combustion. Smoke was heavy and woefully obvious. Others simply passed the truck and trailer without word. After much effort, I pulled the truck over. Surprised truck driver sat there with a fire extinguisher while calling for assistance. Same people who never made the effort to save potential victims in 30th Street station also never informed this truck driver of a potentially catastrophic event.

We don't even know if the truck driver survived in the topmost pictures. We have been provided so few facts from the pictures as to learn almost nothing. That's not cool.

From the link in UT's post;

I don't think it crashed into anything. Looks like it rolled and spilled it's load while sliding parallel to the guard rail.

A gentle curve can be anything but when you're moving a many-ton truck with cargo at speed. Just looking at the weather conditions at the time of the pictures...there's some pretty thick mist in the air. The accident happened at 7am. It's reasonable to say that there might have been a 0 ft ceiling (straight up fog, basically) instead of it hovering a few stories up. Also, a day like that suggests it was wet the night before, rainy, heavy mist, whatever. Road slickness might be a factor too. And again, the crash was at 7am. The driver may have been driving all night, or up really early and not at peak for driving in those conditions.

Also, the very first picture shows a shoot in the direction the truck had come from. You do see skid marks, just under the bridge. They're very short, which suggests it was right around there the truck lost control and flipped over. There's one picture on the EHOWA site that shows the pillars had large chunks around their bases without much charring on them. That would indicate the truck hit the pillars at speed, either during or right after it flipped, and knocked off those flakes of pillar. In the third picture UT posted, see how high on the bern the burn marks are? You can tell it's a bit of a distance from the crash site because the grasses in the foreground are rather large against the truck wreckage. Fuel must have splashed way up there. Something had to have propelled it way up there and a strike to the pillars at speed would have done so nicely.

I say: The truck was likely coming down that curve too fast. How fast, I don't know, but fast enough for the truck to loose control. If fog was a factor, the driver simply may have misjudged the length of the curve with little to no visibility. While turning leftward into the lanes, the driver senses a problem and tries to correct it and perhaps hits the brakes. The driver turns the wheel a little too hard to the left. I can only see one, maybe two skidmarks, from that first picture, so the truck may have already had wheels off the ground by the time it got under the bridge. The top end of the truck is already moving too fast to be corrected by the driver. Physics flexes its ugly muscles, the truck strikes the pillars top first, which breaks the fuel storage area and all of that is more than enough to produce tremendous heat or sparks. Fuel goes up in a blaze of glory. Truck gets the short end of the stick. At this point, still no word on the driver but there's a cooler on the ground a few feet from the wreckage of the cab. If driver was ejected, it was most likely fatal. If driver didn't get out, again most likely fatal. Honestly, I'll be surprised if driver made it out and hasn't died from injuries.

Now, all I need is to find an offical report to see how right/wrong I am

It's hard to tell exactly since the trailer has already been pulled out of there with the tractor still smoking. Merging traffic may have played a role.

Excellent, Cbane! Welcome to the Cellar, stick around a bit and you might be amused.