Fiery Truck Crash Kills Driver, Closes Freeways

The driver of a tanker truck was killed Sunday morning when he lost control of the vehicle on an Eastside freeway interchange and the truck exploded into flames, sending burning fuel down a storm drain and into the Los Angeles River, authorities said.

The 7 a.m. accident shut down the interchange of the Hollywood, Golden State and Pomona freeways for about two hours, and the southbound Hollywood transition lanes to the Golden State remained closed until 4 p.m.

Although the truck was burned to a near skeleton by the fireball, some fuel had to be pumped from the tanks before the truck could be cleared from the road Sunday afternoon and the highway inspected for damage.

Authorities said it appeared that the driver, who had not been identified, may have hit a concrete barrier as the tanker was rounding a curve on the southbound transition road. The truck slid about 100 yards and rolled onto its side, coming to rest in flames across all three lanes of the ramp.

“Surprisingly and fortunately, there were no other vehicles involved,” said Phil Weireter, a Los Angeles City Fire Department spokesman.

It took 90 firefighters about an hour to douse burning fuel that poured from the truck into a nearby storm drain and into the river about a quarter-mile away, officials said. The flames shot high enough to blacken an overhead sign about 30 feet from the roadway, but did not spread to freeway lanes in the interchange. Nor did they travel down the river much beyond the storm drain outlet near the Olympic Boulevard bridge, authorities said.

The compartmentalized tanker, owned by Rolling Tankers of Wilmington, had a capacity of 7,500 gallons and was carrying gasoline and diesel fuel, officials said. Authorities were not sure how much fuel escaped into the shallow river channel, but they believe they caught most of it with booms before it reached the ocean.

“We would expect we’d have little to no impact on the environment,” said Gerald Munoz, a specialist with the county Fire Department’s hazardous waste control program.

Hazardous materials workers set up absorbent booms in two spots on the river, at Imperial Highway in South Gate and in Long Beach. A crew was dispatched for cleanup along the scorched riverbanks near the storm drain outlet.