Semi rolls over spills oil, stalls traffic

A semitruck rolled at the intersection of 600 S. and Main Street in Logan, spilling oil halfway across the street and backing up traffic for 11 blocks at 4:20 p.m. Thursday.

The driver of the crash was the only one hurt, said Chad Vernon, the Logan police officer at the scene. The driver was taken to the hospital with minor injuries, he said.

Vernon said the rollover was caused when the female driver of the semitruck lost control when making a left-hand turn. He said the rollover was possibly due to the cargo she was carrying.

“We don’t know what she was carrying, but the accident was possibly caused by a load shift,” Vernon said.

A Logan resident, who preferred to remain anonymous because of an affiliation with a trucking company, heard the crash and said he thought the load must have been quite heavy.

“Whatever was in the truck was sure heavy,” he said. “It was so heavy that when it tipped over, the contents made one side of the truck bulge out.”

The semitruck itself was the most damaged part of the accident.

“Semitrucks are just like cars, they crash and get damaged,” Vernon said. “This truck is totaled. The company won’t be able to fix it. They might be able to save the engine.”

The accident backed up traffic from 600 South to 500 North, slowing traffic to an almost stop. Diana Perez, a Logan resident who got stuck in the traffic, said the traffic was backed up so much that she thought the accident had to be closer than 600 South. Perez said she had to turn off Main Street in order to get her daughter to her dance class.

“I turned off the road because it was so bad,” Perez said. “The cars weren’t even moving. You’d think they would be directing traffic or something.”

Vernon said he thought part of the traffic problems stemmed from people stopping to take a look at the accident and see what happened.

“Looking Lucys are a problem,” Vernon said. “Traffic could go a lot faster if people wouldn’t slow down.”

The accident took Elden Dattage Towing Company two hours to clean up the truck and the oil on the ground, he said.

Elden Dattage, the owner of the towing company, said it took three large tow trucks to clear the scene of the accident.

“We had to take all 78,000 pounds of the wreck and lift it into the air to clean it up,” Dattage said.

Vernon said the towing company is also in charge of cleaning up the oil spilled by the truck.

“They have to clean up the oil,” Vernon said. “They’ve got oil-absorbing powder that they come pour on the mess to clean it up.”

The bill for the mess will be charged to the insurance company of the trucking company, which is in charge of paying to clean up the mess, Vernon said.

“The city is not in charge of paying for the cleanup of accidents like this,” Vernon said. “That responsibility falls upon the trucking company and the insurance company.”

Accidents like this happen more often than people think, Dattage said.

“This is our second semi-accident today,” he said. “We get to do all the final clean up.”

-debrajoy.h@aggiemail.usu.edu