None Hurt When Train Hits Semi; Trailer Cut In Half
A Union Pacific train slammed into a semi-truck Sunday evening, cutting the trailer in half but injuring no one seriously.
“I jumped down on the floor and just heard the blast,” said train conductor William Moore, of Liberty Lake. “It sounded like an explosion.”
The tractor trailer was driven by Richard A. Martel, 39, of Cheyenne, Wyo., according to Kootenai County Sheriff’s Lt. Ben Wolfinger. The crash happened shortly after 7 p.m. at the intersection of U.S. 95 and Garwood Road.
Trucker Ned Paffile was standing at a payphone, watching the train, when he saw the crash.
Paffile said a flagger was signaling vehicles around another crash on U.S. 95. The semi was flagged into the path of the train, he said.
“He didn’t stop - the flagger was flagging him,” Paffile said.
Inside the first of two locomotives, Moore saw the truck across the tracks. The 62-car train weighed 7,200 tons, he said. Going 40 miles per hour, it went roughly a quarter mile before it stopped, even with the brakes locked.
“We were whistling and whistling and whistling,” Moore said. “It’s a good thing he kept going. When we were coming up on him, the tractor was right on the tracks.”
The train slammed through the rig, leaving the tractor and cab on one side of the tracks, and the rear section of the trailer on the other.
“It was like a bomb going off,” said Paffile. “At first I thought he took the cab with him. I was shaking.”
The collision blew out a window in the locomotive cab and smashed handholds, Moore said. Part of the trailer wall was stuck to the front of the locomotive after the crash, Wolfinger said.
Rathdrum resident Larry Davis heard the crash from his home about a quarter mile away.
“I heard the train coming, heard the whistle, then I heard the brakes going off,” he said. “Then I heard the crash.”
The Idaho State Police are investigating the crash. Wolfinger said the truck driver apparently failed to yield at the stop sign before the tracks.
Aug. 7, Wolfinger said, is Martel’s date of birth.
“It’s a lucky birthday,” Wolfinger said.