Wyoming Highway Patrol Cites Tanker Driver

April 6, 2004
The driver of the gas tanker that overturned and exploded in Casper on Sunday was going too fast to negotiate the curve at the Highway 20/26 bypass
The driver of the gas tanker that overturned and exploded in Casper on Sunday was going too fast to negotiate the curve at the Highway 20/26 bypass, Wyoming Highway Patrol officials said.

Brian D. Matthew, 22, suffered a shoulder injury when he released his lap belt and fell to the opposite end of the cab of his the semi.

Patrol officials said Matthew was cited for going too fast for conditions, said patrol Sgt. Steve Townsend.

Matthew's semi, which was pulling two tanker trailers filled with 12,300 gallons of unleaded gasoline, crashed near an embankment beneath Interstate 25 around 10 p.m.

Matthew got away from the truck just before it exploded, sending flames 100 feet into the air.

The crash halted and redirected traffic on I-25 for about two hours, officials reported.

"The whole community is just very lucky that it occurred right up there. There was no drainage -- there wasn't a stream -- or anything that the gasoline could have gotten into and contaminated," said Jim Nations, spokesman for the Wyoming Department of Transportation. "If the vehicle had gone another 100 feet, it potentially could have impacted the interstate bridge and that would have been a disaster."

Matthew was taken to the Wyoming Medical Center for the shoulder injury and was treated and released, according to officials. No one else was injured in the explosion.

Matthew, an employee of Red Eagle Transport in Cody, was on his way back to Cody after filling up his tanker at the Sinclair Refinery in Casper, officials said.

He had taken the northbound off-ramp from I-25 to Highway 20-26. At the bottom of the ramp, Matthew was making the left turn onto the Highway 20-26 bypass when the semi rolled over onto its right side and slid across the highway and up against the guardrail.

One of the tankers exploded and the semi was soon engulfed. Burning fuel flowed down the highway underneath the I-25 overpass, but fire officials elected to let the fuel burn off so it would not contaminate the surrounding area.

The semi, consumed by the fire, was a total loss, Townsend said.

Monday morning, the scene was still being cleared of concrete barrier bits and the charred wreckage of the semi was loaded for transport.

Engineers from the Wyoming Department of Transportation were called to check for any damage to the overpass. It was determined that no structural damage had occurred to the overpass or supports on I-25 but the guardrail and jersey barrier have to be replaced, officials reported.

On the nearby traffic light poles, the lens on the sensor was melted, according to Nations.

"That was probably 75 feet from the fire and it's about 12 feet high ... so the heat must have been absolutely tremendous," he said.

The concrete roadway on Highway 20-26 will also need repair or replacement in the future, according to Nations, who said the area will be monitored often for deterioration.

The cost of repairing the damage will be the responsibility of the company that caused it and their insurers, Nations said.

"It will not be cheap -- we're easily looking at tens of thousands of dollars -- because there will be remediation on the soil," in addition to the highway repairs, he said.

Department of Environmental Quality officials were not available for comment on the depth of the contamination.

Red Eagle Transport officials could also not be reached Monday.

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