GARDINER — An unusual noise awoke Bob McCauley at his Old Gardiner Road home Thursday morning.
“I just heard sort of a grinding noise, like someone was dragging a Dumpster across some gravel,” said McCauley, who lives near U.S. Highway 101 where a tanker-truck filled with about 11,300 gallons of fuel collided with another vehicle and plowed down an embankment.
Both drivers unhurt
Alexander B. Krauch, the 17-year-old Sequim motorist involved in the crash, and 58-year-old tanker-truck driver Jackie M. Hart walked away unhurt, though Krauch’s 1999 Subaru Legacy was destroyed when it rolled, coming to rest on its roof.
The truck pulling two tanks lay partially twisted on an embankment much of Thursday until its fuel was drained from the tanks so it could be towed.
No fuel was spilled in the collision, the State Patrol reported.
The crash blocked traffic in both directions for 30 minutes, state troopers reported.
101 ropened for traffic
Highway 101 was reopened to two-way traffic at 8:10 a.m. and was partially closed for alternating traffic shortly after 4 p.m. so the tanker-truck could be towed from the scene.
It was towed and the highway briefly closed during the truck’s removal from the embankment.
The highway was reopened at about 5:15 p.m.
McCauley said the east end of Old Gardiner Road was closed while State Patrol troopers and first responders with Clallam County Fire District No. 3 investigated and cleared the scene.
The State Patrol said Krauch was cited for failing to yield to the oncoming 2004 Freightliner tanker-truck, which was heading westbound on 101 when the teen pulled out in front of it in an attempt to turn left into the highway’s eastbound lane.
Patrick Young, public information officer with Fire District No. 3, said firefighters protected a drainage ditch where the truck came to rest with absorbent material to stop any potential fuel leak from reaching nearby creeks.
Officials from the trucking company were on the scene awaiting the arrival of a transfer pump from Kent and assisted with draining fuel from the double tanker.
McCauley said Gardiner residents have long discussed left-turn dangers on and off U.S. Highway 101.
“The intersection there is unsafe,” he said of Old Gardiner at 101.
In March 2010 just south of 101 and about two miles east of Thursday’s crash scene, a Discovery Bay RV Park resident was killed when her vehicle was struck while she was turning left in the eastbound lane into the park.
Their friend’s death inspired Discovery Bay RV Park residents to raise $30,000 to add an eastbound left-turn lane into the park, which the state Department of Transportation installed last spring.
Gardiner residents have mostly opposed a truck-passing lane Transportation proposed for 101 through Gardiner because of the left-turn dangers they experience, and state traffic engineers nixed the proposal.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
