No one seriously hurt as truck hauling explosives rolls over

WASILLA — Though the wreck slowed traffic on the Parks Highway for most of the day Thursday, it couldn’t have turned out better for everyone involved.

“As far as injuries, there were no injuries, very little product as far as haz-mat got on the ground,” said Central Mat-Su Deputy Chief Michael Keenan. “The stuff that was involved, luckily, was stable.”

And by “stuff” he means ammonium nitrate — explosives.

“It’s a very safe and stable product. It has to be mixed with a fuel before it will readily explode,” Keenan said.

He said that’s why firefighters worked so quickly to contain the 10 to 15 gallons of diesel fuel mixed with motor oil that spilled out of the truck’s engine and fuel tank when it tipped. The ammonium nitrate never got out of the shipping container it was in, he said.

“It was still in the connex, so we felt pretty comfortable about it,” Keenan said. “The company that was shipping it was on scene pretty quickly and removed the blasting caps that were in a different part of the truck.”

Keenan said the department called out its hazardous materials response truck and surrounded the spilled fuel with dirt then soaked it up with absorbent pads.

Shortly before 4 p.m., he said the effort to get the truck and shipping container out of there had recently wrapped up.

Keenan didn’t get to stay for the whole incident, though, because between righting the trailer and truck and picking up the connex with a crane, a car waiting in the line of backed up traffic caught on fire.

“The chief from Willow Fire Department was close by and he stopped and he had knocked it down with a fire extinguisher,” Keenan said.

Firefighters don’t generally release names of people involved in incidents they respond to. Police do, but Wasilla Police Chief Gene Belden said he didn’t have the driver’s name when reached Thursday afternoon.

He did say, though, that the driver was not seriously hurt in the accident.

“He was fine. He got a little knot on the head, the medics looked at him and that was it,” Belden said.

The truck was northbound coming down the hill on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway Extension and turning left onto the Parks Highway when it flipped, the chief said.

“What happened is he came down the hill, stopped at the stop light and was turning to go (west) and as he turned his load shifted and tipped him right over,” Belden said.

Though it was traveling in one of the main travel lanes, he said the semi landed in the turn lane that runs in front of the Tesoro station on the corner there. In light of that, Belden had one item to add to the list of things to be thankful didn’t happen — that the semi didn’t crush a smaller vehicle when it rolled.

“It’s a good thing nobody was in the other lane,” Belden said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.