Tank Truck Crash on I-5 Jams Traffic for 18 Miles

A tractor-trailer rig carrying more than 4,000 gallons of gasoline overturned and exploded Saturday morning on the southbound side of Interstate 5 at Camp Pendleton, killing the driver and closing all eight lanes of the freeway in a daylong traffic jam.

William Christopher Lindwedel, a driver for Wright Oil Co. of Santee, northeast of San Diego, was trapped in the driver’s seat of the flaming wreckage.

At the tieup’s worst, southbound traffic stretching back about 18 miles to San Juan Capistrano was at a dead stop, California Highway Patrol Sgt. Chon Gomez said. Some frustrated drivers, trapped on the freeway for 6 hours, got out and paced on the shoulder. Others cut through the thick wire cables of the center divider and made U-turns onto the northbound lanes.

“It was the worse traffic I have ever seen,” said veteran helicopter pilot Steve Ford, who operates out of John Wayne Airport.

Control Lost

The driver of the tanker apparently lost control of the rig at about 4:27 a.m., about 6 miles north of Oceanside. The truck, which carried two tanks full of gasoline, overturned near the center divider and immediately burst into flames, according to Capt. Dennis Cross of the Camp Pendleton Fire Department.

When the firefighters arrived 4 minutes later, they saw “a 50-yard radius of solid fire,” Cross said. The tanker blocked two lanes of traffic, but dry brush on the ocean side of the freeway ignited from the sheer heat of the fire, forming an impassable wall of flames.

The CHP closed all lanes of traffic each way because fire officials, not knowing what the tanker contained, feared the smoke might be toxic.

“We couldn’t see any of the markings on the truck or anything,” Cross said. “We couldn’t even get close enough to see if the driver was still inside.”

Cross said he dispatched two teams of firefighters to search the area in case the driver had stumbled from the wreckage. Lindwedel’s remains were later discovered inside the truck’s cab, Cross said.

The firefighters did not spray water on the flaming wreckage at first, in case it contained a water-reactant chemical, Cross said. Hazardous materials teams arrive by helicopter and determined that the burning substance was gasoline. Firefighters extinguished the flames at 5:30 a.m.

Traffic Rerouted

Meanwhile, CHP officers and Caltrans workers rerouted traffic through Camp Pendleton, but the effort did little to alleviate the tremendous traffic jam that had begun before sunrise.

Dispatcher Jonette Edwards said the CHP advised southbound drivers to take the Ortega Highway from San Juan Capistrano to Interstate 15, and then south to San Diego. But eventually the Ortega Highway also backed up for 12 miles, and the CHP issued a SigAlert advising drivers to avoid it.

Traffic heading north, which had backed up about six miles to Oceanside Boulevard, was cleared after all northbound lanes of the freeway were opened around 9 a.m.

Two southbound lanes finally opened at about 11:30 a.m., and for the next several hours cars inched past the rig’s hulk of blackened metal that remained in the fast lane. All lanes were opened by 4 p.m.

No other accidents were reported as a result of the overturned truck--probably because traffic was light at the time of the accident, officials said. Gomez said the CHP expected to cruise the sides of the freeway later in the day to rescue motorists whose cars broke down or ran out of gas while waiting.

Highway patrol investigators at the scene examined the skid marks left by the truck in an attempt to determine the cause of the accident. It was not known Saturday evening what caused the driver to lose control of the big rig, but CHP officials speculated that Lindwedel may have fallen asleep at the wheel. The tire tracks indicated that the rig ran off the road and was headed toward the northbound lanes, but veered away sharply just before colliding with the fence in the center divider. “Apparently, he caught himself before he hit the cable, tried to steer back onto the road and lost it,” Gomez said.

Lindwedel, 45, lived in Ramona in northern San Diego County. He is survived by his wife, Roberta, a spokesman for the coroner’s office said.

The cleanup effort continued throughout the day. A disposal service company was brought in to remove 200 to 300 gallons of gasoline that had remained inside the wreckage. Cross said some of the gasoline that had run into nearby drainage ditches would be flushed with water and suctioned out by the disposal company. The gasoline did not flow far enough to contaminate sources of water or the ocean, Cross said.