Severe weather causes highway havoc

Nick Ianniello

Mineral Independent

Snowy weather and icy conditions kept the West End Volunteer Fire Department busy this weekend, as they had to respond to five wrecks between Friday and Sunday.

Throughout the weekend, 14 fire fighters worked for a total of around 20 hours to clear the different wrecks off of I-90.

The first wreck took place Friday morning at 11 a.m. when a tractor trailer carrying potatoes slipped into a ditch in a narrow section of I-90 at mile post 24.

“The problem was that it was in the canyon and we needed lots of traffic control,” said West End Volunteer Fire Department Fire Chief Bruce Charles.

The driver of the truck was not injured, but his vehicle had come to rest in a very difficult position.

After several failed attempts to turn the truck onto its wheels without completely stopping traffic, responders realized that they would have to place wrecking vehicles directly onto the highway in order to get the truck back onto its wheels.

“The only way it could be pulled over successfully was to have the wrecking trucks actually in the highway to pull the tractor trailer back up and in the canyon that’s a very dangerous thing to do,” Charles said. “So we used our fire trucks and our people to control oncoming traffic and stop traffic when necessary.”

The wreck took around four hours to clean up, and Charles said that by the time they finally had the scene cleared they were immediately called out to respond to another tractor trailer wreck.

Volunteers had to pick up more equipment at the fire house and another call was put out for more fire fighters to relieve some of the ones that had been working for the past four hours.

The second wreck was between the six and seven mile markers and had almost completely blocked off traffic.

Charles said that when they arrived at the scene the driver was complaining of back pain and although he had no serious visible injuries he was sent to the Mineral Community Hospital for a thorough check.

“Often a lot of this is precautionary. A guy’s back is hurting and you don’t know whether it’s temporary or if he’s got a broken back,” Charles said.

As wreckers cleared the accident scene, Charles and the rest of the fire crew worked to ensure that the traffic that was piling up behind the wreck stayed under control.

“One of our problems was that as people continued to come down the interstate, they would run into a full line of traffic so we tried to get them slowed down so they didn’t rear-end somebody,” Charles said.

Volunteers were done with the second wreck by 7 p.m., but Charles said that they only had a little time to get some food before they were called out to a third wreck Friday evening.

The third wreck was at mile marker 15 on I-90 and the driver had run into the barrier in the middle of the interstate.

Charles said that the driver had likely broken his nose and possibly a rib and he was transported to the Mineral Community Hospital.

By the time the rest of the wreck had been cleaned up and volunteers got to head home, Charles said that the time was 11 p.m.

The West End Volunteers got a breather on Saturday as there were no wrecks, but starting at 10 a.m. Sunday the department was back at work on I-90.

At the third mile marker on I-90 a truck has wrecked and was entirely blocking traffic, which had backed up all the way to Saltese.

“The problem is there are people doing 75 miles an hour on an icy road and all of a sudden they come around a corner and there’s a line of traffic there and they’ve got nowhere to go,” Charles said. “So what we do is run one or two fire vehicles down and continue to move them so that they’re in a position to warn oncoming traffic.”

Charles said with the help of the Montana Department of Transportation, they blocked off traffic heading east and took some of their emergency vehicles up to clear the scene of the accident while some vehicles stayed behind to control traffic.

“There was some absolutely first class work from the DOT guys,” Charles said.

The driver of the tractor trailer was taken to the Mineral Community Hospital and the accident was cleared within a few hours. The truck spilled around 50 gallons of fuel along with radiator fluid and other hazardous materials that Charles and his volunteers had to clean up.

Later Sunday afternoon firefighters responded to a vehicle rollover in which the mother of two children who were uninjured, had to be transported to the Mineral Community Hospital for back injuries.

Charles said that the driving conditions on I-90 were too dangerous for the speeds that many people were driving this weekend.

“It’s the same story every time, people are just driving too fast for conditions. We need to reduce the speed limit in that canyon. It’s madness to being doing even 65 miles per hour on an ice and snow covered road,” Charles said.