Two people are dead after their semitrailer exploded when it hit another semi parked illegally on the side of Interstate 80 near Green River on Sunday.
The crash scene “was a pretty bad one,” said Green River Fire Department Assistant Chief Larry Erdmann. “It was almost like a movie scene.”
Usually with a highway crash involving fire, there’s debris scattered about, “Then if the vehicle catches fire, it’s down the road a little,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Monday morning.
“On this one, the explosion seems to have happened on impact,” he added.
That corresponds with the initial information reported by the Wyoming Highway Patrol, said agency spokesman Aaron Brown.
Troopers were dispatched at 5:23 a.m. to the crash on eastbound I-80 near mile marker 93, he said.
“What had happened was a semitruck was parked on the right side of the highway … and at that point, illegally parked,” Brown said. “Another semi, for reasons that we do not know, drifted from the left side of the highway to the right and struck the trailer of the parked semi.”
With that collision, “the second semi basically exploded on impact,” he added.
Both people in the second truck were killed, while the driver of the parked truck was reportedly outside the cab at the time of the collision, Brown said.
He also explained that the first truck was illegally parked because there was no apparent emergency, and parking is only allowed for emergencies.
“It was mostly on the shoulder,” he said. “However, I believe the way it was explained to me is they weren’t parked for an emergency, it was for something else.
“And so, it was an illegal parking and (the driver) was issued a summons for illegal parking instead of a citation.”
The crash closed the eastbound lanes of I-80 throughout the morning, finally reopening shortly before noon, Erdmann said.
Containing The Fire
Brown said there’s no information yet about why the second truck veered all the way from the left lane, through the right and into the trailer of the parked semi.
“We didn’t get the occupants out until well into the fire, so there’s no way of telling what was going on,” he said, adding that they were from California.
In 29 years of volunteering with the Green River Fire Department, Erdmann said it never gets easier responding to fatal crashes.
Firefighters fought the fire with 10 people manning an engine and water tender, said Erdmann, who was the incident commander for the department.
In addition to putting down the flames engulfing the truck, which was a total loss, firefighters also extinguished spot fires and nearby burning grass, he said.
A vehicle fire like Sunday’s “is more difficult to control the fire, because as you’re spraying water on it to extinguish it, it also splashes the fluids around and you have to chase that down.”
By the time his crews got to the scene, the cab of the semi was burning and “had already started into some of the grasses,” Erdmann said. “The first thing we did was make sure we contained the fire to the truck.”
The department also called out a local business, the Hitching Post Restaurant and Saloon, for bringing the emergency responders free breakfast burritos after they’d been at the scene for hours.
It was a generous gesture that the department wanted to call out, said Nancy Rider, coordinator of the agency’s Third Alarm spouses’ group.
“Living in a small community like this … we’ve found out what this town is all about,” she said. “They didn’t bat an eye, just said, ‘We’ll donate it all.’”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
