Wyoming police say that a driver survived after his truck tumbled off of the interstate and onto both sets of railroad tracks below.
The crashed was reported at 5:39 a.m. on Friday, January 11 in Rawlins.
Rawlins police say that a semi truck was traveling on a bridge over I-80 at mile marker 215 when the truck “went over the bridge rail landing on and blocking both sets of Union Pacific Railroad tracks.”
Police say that an eastbound train was in the vicinity of the truck when officers arrived on scene, but they were able to coordinate with Union Pacific to stop train traffic before it arrived at the crash scene.
Luke Richards, from A & C Towing, worked the recovery and emailed the following details and photos to CDLife:
From what it appeared, the truck was traveling west-boumd and had veered into the median guardrail and went right through it. The truck was airborne until it hit nose-first into a service road beside the tracks. The trailer swung overhead of the tractor and landed upside-down, facing the front of the trailer east. The driver of the truck was in pretty bad shape, but I think he’s still alive. The passenger wasn’t hurt too bad from what I was told.
We got the call just before 7 am and had to wait until about 7:30 am until we could move the wreck. It took mostly one heavy wrecker to move everything off of the tracks.
In order to remove the tractor, the rear drive axles were cut off and left on the trailer. The walls of the trailer were split from the roof on the majority of the length. Trailer needed to be split in two to be removed.
East track was clear by around 10:30, 11:00.
Middle track was clear around 1:30, 2:00
Final track was clear around 3:30.
Ultimately, took around 12 hours of total clean up.
Richards also sent CDLLife the following photos from the scene.
Two people inside the semi truck were taken to the hospital for treatment of unknown injuries.
The Wyoming Highway Patrol is still investigating the cause of the crash. Winter weather conditions were reported in the area at the time of the crash.