A Ridgefield towing company had the job of cleaning up after a Monday rollover crash on Interstate 84 in Oregon that left a tractor-trailer in the Columbia River.
“This was a very top-level recovery,” said Justin Bellcoff, who works at Ridgefield’s TLC Towing. “It was far from par for the course. … The height difference, where the tractor-trailer was located, how mangled the trailer was, the contents in it and getting them out.”
Early Monday evening, the Oregon State Police responded to a call about a tractor-trailer crash on westbound Interstate 84, just east of Corbett, Ore.
The vehicle and load went off the roadway, crashed through a guardrail and rolled down a steep embankment before landing on its side along the riverbank, the police said.
The truck driver drifted out of the right lane while checking to move into the fast lane, then struck a disabled Chevy Tahoe parked on the shoulder, the Oregon State Police said. The tractor-trailer then rolled off the roadway.
The big rig’s driver, and the two people with the disabled Tahoe, were hospitalized with minor or non-life threatening injuries, the state police said.
The investigation and cleanup after crash intermittently limited traffic heading west.
First, unload cargo
TLC Towing went to the crash site Wednesday.
The first thing they had to do, Bellcoff said, was unload the cargo of rolled oats from the trailer.
When all the cargo was out, crews used one wrecker and another tow truck, with a boom crane, to pull the trailer up and onto the road.
Then, workers pulled the tractor from the water and cleared it of any contaminants. Once that was done, Bellcoff said, they used the wreckers to pull the vehicle up and out.
TLC Towing was on scene for about eight to nine hours, Bellcoff said.
It was a complicated job, but not too uncommon.
“Everything panned out in the way that we planned,” he said.
The Oregon Department of Transportation said road crews would have to replace about 300 feet of guardrail destroyed in the crash.
