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September 2, 2008

Local truck driver killed in crash with train

MEDFORD (AP) — A man who was badly burned when a locomotive train hit his propane truck has died.

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Dennis Wayne Etherton, 52, of Tahlequah, died Sunday at a hospital in Kansas.

Union Pacific train conductor Larry Benny Williams of Oklahoma City and engineer Richard Pendarvis of Anadarko died in the crash. The train had two engines and 76 cars.

Etherton was airlifted to a hospital with third-degree burns over at least 50 percent of his body.

The accident occurred at 9:20 a.m. Friday on U.S. Highway 81 three miles south of Medford in Grant County, about 20 miles south of the Kansas border.

Union Pacific spokeswoman Raquel Espinoza-Williams said the truck was on the train tracks when the locomotive slammed into it, touching off a huge explosion.

Donna Kush, another Union Pacific spokeswoman, said the two-person crew sounded the horn and began trying to stop the train 140 feet before impact while going about 37 mph.

Mike Honigsberg, emergency management director for neighboring Garfield County, said the emergency actions they took as the locomotive approached the tanker prevented the train from becoming a runaway after they died.

Honigsberg said officials believe the truck driver had just filled up the tanker at the ConocoPhillips LP gas facility next to the accident site. The liquid propane facility was shut down briefly.

All that was left of the locomotive was a burned out shell. The explosion blackened the first three cars and left a large crater in the ground.

The Union Pacific train was traveling from Wichita, Kan., to Fort Worth, Texas, with a load of flour, wheat, possible metals and some flammable substances, Espinoza-Williams said. None of the flammable substances leaked from the train cars.

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