Road, rails, wires back at work in canyon

SPANISH FORK CANYON — Traffic is flowing freely through Spanish Fork Canyon again after crews finished patching up a massive crater on U.S. 6.

The highway was opened shortly before 8 a.m. Friday, after having been closed since 2 p.m. Wednesday when a truck packed with explosives overturned, ignited and blew up.

U.S. 6 serves as a route to Colorado for thousands of truck drivers, and others well beyond Spanish Fork Canyon have been affected. Telecommunications cables running into Carbon County were destroyed and train traffic was interrupted because a Union Pacific rail line was busted and shifted. A dozen trains, including an Amtrak passenger train, use the line each day.

By Friday, the most serious damage from the blast had been repaired, and the costs are adding up.

Repairing the 35-foot deep crater could cost between $200,000 and $400,000, UDOT spokesman Nile Eastman said. A final amount should be determined next week.

The estimated expense of repairing telecommunications equipment in the canyon was $25,000 to $30,000.

Travis Stewart of Rexburg, Idaho, was driving the truck east on U.S. 6 to Oklahoma after he picked up the explosives from Ensign-Bickford Industries in Spanish Fork about an hour earlier.

After the truck rolled, witnesses reported seeing it smoke, smolder, then catch on fire. When the truck exploded about three minutes later, more than a dozen of people were knocked to the ground by the force. Numerous people were injured and several vehicles were damaged, but no one was killed.

Utah Highway Patrol investigators believe Stewart was speeding, which may have in part caused the accident, UHP Lt. Ken Peay said.

UHP investigators returned to the scene again on Friday to photograph marks on the road, Peay said. They will submit the final accident report to the Utah County Attorney's Office on Monday.

The county attorney will ultimately decide whether to charge anyone.

Stewart was released from University Hospital on Thursday. His driving partner, Troy Lysfjord of Blackfoot, Idaho, was released earlier from Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.

Blake Bills, operations manager for Ensign-Bickford, said he was unaware what type of insurance the driver and his truck company carry. The Spanish Fork-based explosives manufacturer has been doing business with R and R Trucking for "quite a while," Bills said. "It's been years."