Incident Response

Posted: March 31, 2007

Flaming Car Provides Tunnel Test

A Friday (March 23) car fire on I-90 in Seattle served as a great opportunity to test the efficiency of the tunnels' exhaust systems and safety. A car traveling eastbound on I-90 hit something and caught fire on the bridge mid-span. Traffic came to an immediate halt. Thinking safety first, Washington State Patrol closed all lanes on I-90. However, the closure point was east of the I-90 tunnels, leaving traffic stuck in the tunnels for an undertermined amount of time while the car fire on the span burned itself out. Quick thinking tunnel crews immediately turned their attention to the CO2 levels which began to rise as hundreds of vehicles idled, waiting for the lanes to reopen.

"We have two ways to clear the air," said Jerry Althauser, WSDOT Maintenance Supervisor "One is to take bad air out, and bring good air in. On this day, we had the exhaust fans running at 80 percent and the intake valces running at 50 percent. They ran like this for 15 minutes. We could have easily turned the systems up higher, but we chose instead to talk to the drivers. Of course, if the smoke had blown in the directions of the tunnels, we would have changed the way we cleared the air." Althauser elaborated on the second part of the tunnel process: talk to drivers. "We have systems in the tunnel that allow us to talk directly to drivers by overriding all FM and AM radio stations. We activated the message systems and asked drivers to turn off their vehicles until we reopened the lanes. They complied."

Fire trucks were able to quickly respond to the car fire via the express lanes. They shot water from one roadway to the next which provided a bit of entertainment to those stuck in the backup. The lanes were reopended within 30 minutes.

Minimal traffic result of good teamwork

Good teamwork resulted in minimal traffic impacts on SR 122 in Lewis County on Monday, March 19. Incident Responder Ryan Hottell was notified just after 10 a.m. of an incident blocking the eastbound lane of SR 122 near Cinebar Road in Lewis County. A dump truck was hauling a piece of large machinery when a hook connecting the trailer to the truck broke, sending the trailer and cargo into the eastbound lane.

While in route to the collision, Ryan was alerted that Maintenance Supervisor Lee Proffitt and Maintenance Tech Joe Barajas were responding and would begin setting up traffic control. When Ryan arrived, Proffitt and Barajas had completed traffic control setup and were flagging traffic around the incident. A helpful neighbor also responded to the scene with his privately owned excavator and removed the damaged equipment from the roadway. The speedy response of Proffitt, Barajas, Hottell, and a very helpful neighbor had all debris cleared from the roadway by 11:01 a.m.

IRT Makes Quick Work of U.S. 101 Spill

Incident Response Teams (IRT) clean up a lot of mucky situations, but few are as foul as the March 6 semi-trailer spill that soiled a section of U.S. 101. Approximately 500 gallons of treated sewage spilled onto both northbound lanes of a section of U.S. 101 in Thurston County following a semi rollover. The incident occurred at 6:50 a.m. between Holiday Valley Road and Old Olympic Road, near the Mason County border. Within 15 minutes, WSDOT crews reopened the left northbound lane. IRT technicians Brian Farrar, Glen Briggs, and Kathy Vatter were especially vigilant in safely directing traffic past the scene as a sudden heavy fog limited visibility. The IRT responders also coned off the far right lane and worked with emergency crews to up-right the truck and clear the area of waste and debris. All lanes were re-opened to traffic by 9:07 a.m. The Washington State Patrol, Washington State Department of Ecology, a local tow-truck company and fire department crews were also at the scene.

Response crew all washed up at spill

WSDOT's Incident Response Team (IRT) members spend a large part of their time assisting at collision scenes, managing traffic control, and playing "highway hero" by helping stranded motorist get on their way. Not all days are quite so glamorous, however. Such was the case on Tuesday, March 6, when IRT member Randy Bateman was called to help the Washington State Patrol (WSP) at a manure spill blocking one lane of traffic. Randy headed to the scene on SR 6, at the end of Boisfort Bridge crossing the South Fork of the Chehalis River. While in route, he contacted WSDOT's crew at the Chehalis Maintenance Shed, and asked them to standby in case heavy equipment was needed to remove the spill from the roadway. Randy arrived at 12:57 p.m. and met with the WSP Troopers on scene. They decided that heavy equipment would not be needed, and the Boisfort Fire Department was called to the scene to wash the mess off the roadway. The highway was cleaned and all responders were clear at 1:23 p.m. Thanks for taking care of the “Dirty Work” Randy!

Close Attention to detail helped save 7 individuals.

Maintenance Technician Lyn Zielinski’s close attention to detail allowed her to help many individuals on Friday, February 23. Lyn was patrolling US 97 in a plow truck at 7:30 a.m. when she noticed tire tracks leaving the roadway near Status Creek (at milepost 30) in Klickitat County. Although Lyn could not see any obvious signs of a wreck, she stopped to investigate. Upon hearing voices, Lyn discovered a Ford Expedition carrying seven passengers had tumbled approximately 200 feet down an embankment. She immediately called for assistance, and then helped many of the passengers up the embankment and administered first aid. Maintenance Technician Todd Kindler arrived a short time later and assisted emergency medical responders with the rescue, performing CPR on one of the critically injured passengers. With medical aid being administered, WSDOT’s maintenance crew put traffic control measures in place. Although the roadway was not blocked, “Wreck Ahead” signs were used due to the location of the incident and congestion from response vehicles. A tow truck called to the scene removed the vehicle at 12:47 p.m., and all vehicles cleared the scene at 2:28 p.m.