DENVER (AP) — A semi-trailer truck driver was killed when a train derailed and a railroad bridge collapsed onto a major highway near Pueblo, Colorado, spilling coal and mangled rail cars onto the roadway and shutting it down indefinitely, authorities said Monday.
The 60-year-old driver was initially said to be trapped in the Sunday afternoon accident on Interstate 25, but authorities said Monday that he had died. No other vehicles were involved, Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Gayle Perez said.
Photos and videos posted by authorities showed a partially collapsed bridge over the interstate with the semi-truck caught beneath in the right lane. The images also show a pileup of train cars, train wheels scattered across the scene and loads of coal covering a portion of the highway.
The highway — the main north-south highway in Colorado — remained closed Monday morning. The Colorado Department of Transportation said it would be an “extended closure” as local law enforcement officials waited for federal investigators to arrive.
The bridge was built in 1958 according to Colorado Department of Transportation records, department spokesperson Bob Wilson said. BNSF owns the bridge and is responsible for inspecting it, he said.
It was not immediately known whether the truck was caught beneath the collapsing bridge or if it somehow caused the collapse, Perez said.
The National Transportation Safety Board was sending investigators to the site about 114 miles (183 kilometers) south of Denver.
Officials didn’t provide details about the truck driver’s death, citing an ongoing investigation. Until investigators are able to assess the scene, it’s unknown what the timeline for the highway’s reopening will be, said Perez.
Between 39,000 and 44,000 vehicles daily use I-25, according to Shipley.
The BNSF train carrying coal derailed on a bridge over Interstate 25 just north of Pueblo around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to Kendall Kirkham Sloan, a spokesperson for the Fort Worth, Texas-based freight railroad. There were no reported injuries to BNSF crew. The cause of the derailment was under investigation and BNSF personnel were working with responding agencies to clear the incident as safely as possible, Kirkham Sloan said.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on social media that he had been in touch with Gov. Jared Polis and had been briefed by the Federal Railroad and Federal Highway administrations on the derailment and collapse. He said officials would be ready to help support a swift return to normal use for the highway and rail routes.
Unlike highway bridges, government agencies don’t catalog rail bridges and it’s largely up to the railroads to inspect and maintain them. Federal officials monitor the inspection programs through audits but there is no inventory on the condition of the bridges.
There are somewhere between 61,000 and more than 100,000 railroad bridges across the U.S., according to figures provided by the Federal Railway Administration. The agency defines bridges as having a span of 20 feet or more, whereas some railroads count even short crossings over culverts as bridges.
Congress established the parameters of the government’s oversight of bridges and railway administration officials have previously said they were not able to alter that approach unilaterally.
A railroad bridge collapse along a Montana Rail Link route in southern Montana in June sent railcars with oil products plunging into the Yellowstone River, spilling molten sulfur and up to 250 tons (226.7 metric tons) of hot asphalt. That collapse remains under investigation and involved a steel truss bridge
That’s different than the type of bridge that Colorado officials said collapsed on Sunday. The bridge near Pueblo was a 188-feet (57-meter) long steel girder bridge, said Wilson. It was 14 feet (4 meters) feet wide with a clearance of 16.3 feet (five meters), he said.
President Joe Biden had been scheduled to visit CS Wind, the world’s largest facility for wind tower manufacturing, in Pueblo on Monday, but postponed the trip to stay in Washington and focus on the growing conflict in the Middle East. The White House said just a few hours before Biden was set to take off for the trip that it would be rescheduled.
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