Driver Killed in Fiery Freeway Crash

A truck hauling highly flammable acetylene gas slammed into a stopped car on the San Diego Freeway shortly before dawn Monday. Both vehicles exploded in flames, killing the driver of the car but leaving the truck driver unhurt.

“The whole thing exploded,” said Paul Debban, 35, a stockbroker from Corona del Mar who swerved to miss the collision.

“I think the gas tank on the car went up, and maybe the gas tank on the truck, too,” he said. “There was no chance to pull anyone out of the car. It was an inferno.”

Officers said the acetylene gas did not catch fire.

The accident blocked all northbound traffic on the San Diego Freeway for more than three hours. Traffic heading out of Orange County was rerouted onto the San Gabriel River and Long Beach freeways.

The California Highway Patrol said the car apparently spun out of control, hit a guardrail and come to a halt across two lanes of traffic on the freeway a few seconds before the truck struck it broadside.

The car’s driver, a man tentatively identified as a Long Beach resident, was trapped in the car and burned to death, officers said. The Los Angeles County coroner’s office said the victim was too severely burned to permit immediate identification.

Troy Christensen, 23, of Rialto, driver of the truck, was able to leap to safety before flames spread to the cab of his tractor-trailer rig.

It took Caltrans and Los Angeles County Fire Department crews nearly 3 1/2 hours to clean up the debris in the northbound lanes.