It’s something you hope to never see: A hazmat tanker veering off a high mountain road.
“I was banging on his window. He had his window partially cracked and I was yelling at it. He was non-responsive so I got 911 on the line.”
That was a Krystal 93 listener, Evan, around 12:45 p.m. He called our station soon after a tanker swerved into a snowbank on dry Loveland Pass, about one mile downhill from Arapahoe Basin.
“I’m thinking, well, there’s a runaway truck ramp like 100 yards down. What’s this guy doing?” Evan recalls. “So I knew there was something wrong.”
Evan immediately pulled over. He found the driver breathing but unconscious.
“He was wedged between the driver and the passenger seat still in the seat belt, and his engine was still running.”
Summit Fire and EMS arrived. Firefighters broke into the truck through a window and took the driver to the hospital by ambulance. The photo pictured here is courtesy of Summit Fire and EMS Facebook.
But what made Evan stop? He just happens to be a wilderness first responder.
“It’s just my training too, you know. For me it was just instinct. I had to stop it. There was obviously something wrong.”
Earlier reports had said the tanker was leaking jet fuel. Summit Fire confirms that was a false reading from hazmat equipment.
But none of that – not jet fuel, not a possible leak — was on Evan’s mind when he stopped to help the trucker.
“This guy’s blessed,” Evan says of the trucker. “This guy just gently rolled off into a snow bank and gently stopped with a super hazardous load.”