Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 6, 1990 TAG: 9006060571
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: By NEAL THOMPSON NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The names of the victims were not available because state police were still trying to reach their families.
State police First Sgt. Larry McMahon said one of the men was believed to be from Rockingham County.
Trooper D.T. Gaskins said two of the men were pronounced dead at the scene. The third man died while rescue workers were taking him to Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
The wreck occurred about 5:30 a.m. between exits 36 and 37 in Montgomery County.
The highway was shut down for nearly two hours and traffic was rerouted through Christiansburg on U.S. 11.
Police and state Department of Transportation workers at the scene said it was one of the worst wrecks they had ever seen.
"This is definitely the worst I've seen," said one highway worker, who asked not to be named.
The tanker truck was headed north and the tractor-trailer was traveling south, Gaskins said.
The tanker crossed the median and became airborne before striking the other truck head-on. The trailer of the other truck split open and spilled hundreds of frozen chickens onto the highway.
Police said the driver of the tanker may have fallen asleep.
"I'd say that's probably a good chance of what happened," Gaskins said.
Gaskins said two men had been riding in the cab of the tanker - one was driving and the other was in the sleeper section. One man was in the cab of the other truck.
The cab of the tanker separated from the rest of the truck. It was crushed and landed about 30 yards from the tanker.
The tanker had been carrying aluminum chloride, "but fortunately it was empty," Gaskins said. But crews were still treating it cautiously in case any of the hazardous material remained in the tanker, he said.
The cab of the tractor-trailer also was crushed and separated from its engine by 10 yards.
Rescue crews had to pry open both cabs to remove the bodies. The bodies were taken to the morgue at Community Hospital in Roanoke to be examined by the state medical examiner for Western Virginia.
An autopsy had been scheduled for later today or Thursday on the driver of the tanker truck to rule out the possibility of a heart attack, McMahon said.
Dr. William Massello of the medical examiner's office said that since the tanker truck crossed the highway and apparently caused the wreck, they would check to see if the driver had any medical problems or whether drugs or alcohol was involved.
"The purpose of doing an autopsy is to see if we can find any anatomical reason for his crossing the highway," Massello said.
Gears, tires and chunks of metal from both trucks were strewn for 100 yards up and down the highway. Crews cleared one lane of the highway and tossed sand onto spilled diesel fuel to allow one lane of traffic to get through.
At 8 a.m., a front-end loader was called in to load hundreds of spilled chickens onto another truck.
The tanker truck was owned by American Tanker Transportation Inc. in Elkridge, Md., outside Baltimore.
A spokesman for the company said she could not comment on the wreck or the identity of the two men, but said the company's safety director was on his way to the scene.
The tractor-trailer was owned by H&R Trucking in Dayton, Ohio. The company could not be reached.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB