Posted on 05/02/2024 6:44:59 AM PDT by texas booster
SH 36 in Temple has been reopened after a nearly 350,000-pound distillation column fell off the back of a semi-truck and onto a car Saturday morning, killing two people and sending one to the hospital in critical condition, according to the City of Temple.
The column pinned the vehicle underneath after it was detached from the semi-truck and took a coordinated effort from several different departments to remove it, Temple Fire and Rescue Public Information Office Santos Soto said.
"That load was bigger than anything that we had equipment for and we worked with several different agencies to get several pieces of equipment out there to assist with the recovery process of the occupants," Soto said.
The City has now stated the stretch of road, near Highway 317, has been cleared of debris and is reopened for normal traffic flow.
"We had our special operations team out there as well as special operations teams from Killeen and Georgetown Fire," Soto said.
According to Temple Fire, two of the people in the pinned car died and the third person, the driver, was removed after being trapped for four hours. The driver was taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Their identities have not been released at the time this article was published.
According to the permit, the name of the transport company is Southern Transport LLC, based in Texas. The permit was reportedly effective from April 26 to May 5. The applicant was listed only as "Joe".
The permit described the load that fell off the truck as a "demethanizer". The load reportedly came from Houston, Texas and its final destination was in Winkler County, Texas.
According to the Temple Police Department, the truck was traveling on Highway 36 when a column fell off the truck and onto a car on April 27. Two passengers in the car, identified as 22-year-old Abigail Boatwright and 17-year-old Evan Boatwright, were reportedly killed in the crash, and the driver of the car was taken to the hospital with serious injuries.
Temple Fire and Rescue told 6 News the column pinned the vehicle underneath for several hours. The load reportedly weighed around 350,000 pounds.
6 News has been unable to reach anyone at Southern Transport LLC as of the time this article was written.
Major accident near Temple. How in the world do you let a distiller just fall on a car passing by?
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This is my active fear whenever I drive behind or near one of these loads.
Thats got Granny beat by a bit...
Read the article to my wife. She asked, how does a truck carry a load like that? My answer: this one didn’t.
From what I read earlier last week, The column was spread across multiple trailers in tandem, like a train.
Is this true?
If it is, that is a very bad idea................
That’s on a two-lane highway and the tractor is on the wrong side of the road. I wonder if it was trying to pass the car it dropped the load on.
Freaky, tragic event. Might end that trucking company. Sad.
Texas highway. Many people drive excessively fast and with little patience. The circumstances of the accident are not known yet. Its very possible the truck will have cameras. Might be the drivers fault or it may not be.
From a technical perspective, loads like this are heavily regulated and require very specialized equipment to haul; often the trailers are made specifically for the load when you are talking about this kind of weight.
With this situation, I wouldn’t be surprised if they find improper load securement at a minimum along with excess speed.
We had a large load get escorted through town to its destination 40 miles away.
It seems to be regulated by the state, with Oncor and every safety office known to a bureaucracy involved.
The trip was well planned and stopped when safe to let others pass.
How the load came off the road to fall is a planning failure by the State.
Who applied for the permit to carry the load and who approved it?
Was this one on a two-lane or 4 lane with median?................
More likely is that when the load shifted, it carried the truck along with it.
Here is a link to a video showing the truck moving thru a small town prior to the accident. You will need to watch a couple minutes of the news broadcast before they show the video.
https://www.kwtx.com/2024/04/27/two-people-dead-another-injured-fatal-crash-involving-18-wheeler/
They say it was a distillation tower was 217 feet long and it was hauled on two trailers with each trailer having 40 tires.
According to what I’ve read, they already know the answers to those questions so that part doesn’t seem to be the issue. Rather, some failure post-permitting, whether hours of service, driver behavior, et. al., or possibly exterior factor (other motorist) - all will be scrutinized to the Nth degree.
YOU should see the loads on Hay trucks near where I live.
288 bales 100# each on a trailer-—2 trailers # 256 bales on the truck ==832 bales.
MY hay gets delivered on same day as 4 other ranches within a 3 mile circle. The truck/trailer/trailer ( called a “Triple) and the squeeze comes along to deliver into barn or on pallets, like mine.
Direct from grower—NEVER have had a bad bale. Family operation-3 generations.
But those truck are huge on the highway-—
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