UPDATED: Two semi accidents cause early morning road closures
CHARLES H. FEATHERSTONE | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 2 years, 11 months AGO
A stretch of I-90 north of Warden was closed Thursday morning when a westbound semi-tractor trailer flipped over.
COURTESY PHOTO/WASHINGTON STATE PATROL
UPDATE: Both I-90 and SR28 are now back open as of 10:30 a.m. per the Grant County Sheriff's Office and the Washington State Patrol.
WARDEN — Both eastbound and westbound lanes of I-90 were closed after a semi-tractor trailer traveling westbound near the Road U exit flipped over, completely blocking the road’s two westbound lanes about 10 miles east of Moses Lake.
According to Washington State Patrol Trooper Collin Cumaravel, Manvir Hayer, 27 of Abbotsford, British Columbia, was driving westbound on I-90 when at around 5:30 a.m. he fell asleep, drifted off the road, overcorrected and flipped his truck on its side. The driver was uninjured, Cumaravel said, but fire, ambulance and tow truck crews blocked I-90’s eastbound lanes in order to respond to the accident.
Cumaravel said the biggest difficulty crews at the scene were having was getting the semi-tractor trailer pulled up and on its wheels in order to move it, and the roadway was not cleared for travel in both directions until about 10:30 a.m.
“It takes a while to get it righted,” he said.
A second accident involving a large truck has prompted the closure of S.R. 28 near Neva Lake Road just south of Ephrata, spilling a load of logs across the highway, Cumaravel said.
At around 3 a.m., Cumaravel said the Gregg Scott, 56, of Tonasket, was driving a truckload of logs going westbound on S.R. 28 when he appeared to have had a medical emergency, drifted off the highway onto the westbound shoulder, overcorrected, and flipped his truck over, spilling logs across the highway.
Cumaravel said S.R. 28 was cleared and open to traffic at around 9:30 a.m.
No one was injured in the accident, the trooper said, though Scott was airlifted first to Central Washington Hospital in Wenatchee and then on to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle to treat an unspecified medical condition.
“It was pretty serious,” Cumaravel added.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com
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