Decker: Driving tanker truck a dangerous job

LIMA - As far as dangerous jobs, the man who heads the county's emergency response agency ranks tanker truck drivers as high as road workers, firefighters and police officers.

"I would put a semi driver in the same boat because they're on the road so much there's so many things that can go wrong," said Russ Decker, director of the Allen County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

Drivers are on the road all day, day in and day out. They have other vehicles to contend with as well as conditions that come about such as bad weather, he said.

The explosion of a tanker truck on Monday north of Cairo carrying 8,500 gallons of gasoline shows how dangerous the job can be, he said. The driver, Timothy Dawson, 31, of Cridersville, escaped before his truck burst into flames. Dawson was reaching for something when he drove off the right side of the road into a ditch, which led his truck to overturn.

But not all are so lucky. In 2006, a Lima doctor, who sheriff investigators said ran a red light at the intersection of Eastown and Allentown roads, died in a fiery explosion after striking a full tanker truck knocking it on its side.

The county has had five tanker truck crashes during the past five years including the one on Monday, Decker said.

Two were at Breese Road and South Dixie Highway and the other was on state Route 115, he said.

With the exception of the Eastown and Allentown roads crash, the drivers were at fault in all of the crashes, which were single-vehicle crashes.

In Monday's crash, Sgt. Rick Sanchez, of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, said fluid shifting inside a tank, especially when there's a lot of weight behind it, can lead to big problems. Troopers said the shifting fluid was a factor in keeping the driver from returning to the road.

But as much as shifting fluid can be a problem, not having a load, or weight, can be a problem as it was in the crash on state Route 115, Decker said. In that crash, the truck was empty on slippery roads with high winds that made it hydroplane off the roadway.

"When you're driving a trailer and there's no weight back there it's just like driving a sail," Decker said.

Tanker truck drivers and others who carry hazardous materials receive extra training and have more rules to follow such as maintaining properly marked placards that alert emergency responders to the type of load they are carrying, Decker said.

In Monday's crash, emergency responders quickly knew they were dealing with gasoline when they saw a red placard, which meant flammable material and the No. 1203 indicating gasoline. It further had No. 3 classification meaning a liquid, he said.

Placards are displayed on both sides of a trailer and the rear. Placards contain different colors, symbols and numbers depending on the material aboard, he said.

"All those things mean different things to responders. We all train how to read the placards" Decker said.

That training includes a mandatory four hours for all police and firefighter cadets, he said.

"That's how important they are," he said.

Placards, which are required by the U.S. Department of Transportation, are checked by police at weigh stations and by state road safety officers patrolling the highways, he said.