‘We were super-lucky,’ fire chief says; most fuel didn’t burn, truck driver took right steps
(Update: Adding video, photos; highway reopens’ details from Cloverdale fire chief, witness)
SISTERS, Ore. (KTVZ) – The fiery T-bone collision of an SUV and fuel tanker truck on Highway 126 east of Sisters early Sunday morning sent flames soaring 150 feet into the sky, cut power to over 4,200 Central Electric Cooperative customers and closed the highway for several hours of cleanup.
But the SUV driver sustained minor injuries, only one of three cells in the rear tanker trailer breached — and despite all the danger and damage, it could have turned out a lot worse.
“We got super-lucky,” Cloverdale Fire Chief Thad Olsen said later Sunday.
Cloverdale Rural Fire Protection District crews were dispatched just after midnight to the reported collision on Highway 126 at Cloverdale Road. They arrived to find the SUV and tanker truck had collided, and the rear trailer of the tanker had ruptured.
A perimeter was established, and Redmond Fire’s ARFF (Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting) truck was requested to help ensure the flames did not spread to the front trailer or grass fields in the area.
The ARFF crew was able to approach the fire and use aqueous film-forming foam to contain the fuel fumes and put out the fire.
Sisters-Camp Sherman Fire paramedics took the SUV driver to St. Charles Bend. There were no other injuries, Olsen said.
The tanker truck driver with Space Age Fuel was headed west on the highway when the car at the intersection collided with the rear trailer in T-bone fashion, Olsen said.
The crash took out the rear axle of the rear tanker truck, making it drag on the ground, and the leaking fuel caught the tires on fire, he said. That’s what the first crew on scene found – but then one of the tanker cells breached, and the fire sent flames 150 feet into the sky, forcing crews back.
“We had reports of a vehicle under the trailer, but turned out not to be true,” Olsen said. “We were just trying to assess and make sure we didn’t have a rescue situation, then backed off and waited for the Redmond Airport truck. He said it took about 90 minutes from the time of the crash to bring the fire under control.
The rear tanker trailer carried a total of 11,200 gallons of diesel and unleaded fuel in three cells, he explained, and only the rear section breached. That cell had about 3,000 more gallons of unburned fuel remaining when the foam put out the fire.
The smoke was so dense that the 115,000-volt power lines overhead were arcing down to the ground, another of the “huge firefighter safety factors,” Olsen said.
“We got super-lucky,” he said. “Fortunately it was in an area that was not exposure to the wildland.”
The fire chief praised the truck driver who saw the initial fire and was “very cognizant getting away from the trees, and parked where he couldn’t see vegetation.”
“It took a while to slow down” and stop, Olsen said. “If he would have stopped fast, it could have jackknifed, and probably could have gone much worse.”
Nearby, Alex Cyrus, visiting his family from Portland, said he was sitting in bed, about to go to sleep, when “I heard screeching brakes, as if someone trying to stop, then heard the impact, looked out out my window and saw flames – not a good thing.”
Cyrus, a former area firefighter, called 911 to report the crash and fire, then woke up his father, Matt, who went and got a fire truck, and “drove up as close as comfortable.”
“At first, I saw just the tires on fire,” he said, “but as soon as I pulled up to the tanker, saw how big the flames were getting,” he like the others stayed back at a safe distance.
Instead, he directed traffic for a time: “I made sure everyone coming westbound turned around.”
Cloverdale RFPD thanked the Redmond and Sisters-Camp Sherman fire partners, as well as the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office, Oregon State Police, ODOT and Central Electric Cooperative for their quick response.
CEC said more than 4,200 Sisters-area members lost power because of equipment damaged by the crash and fire. Repair crews had power restored to all but about 500 members within a few hours, and the last to be affected, in the Cloverdale and Aspen Lakes areas, were expected to have power back by 1 p.m.
ODOT established a detour around the fire scene until the highway reopened by about 1 p.m. Check traffic updates at our TripCheck page.
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