Jet Fuel Spill Closed Wyoming I-80 Wednesday

Early Wednesday morning listeners to Wyoming's morning radio talk show Wake Up Wyoming began texting me that Interstate 80 had been closed.

I checked the WyDot Road Condition Map to see that, at that time, a large section of interstate between Laramie and Wamsutter had been closed.

That's a huge area.

Later in the morning, the closure had extended from Cheyenne to Wamsutter.

All alternative routes have been closed as well. They did not want anyone trying to loop around I-80 only to end up right where the problem was.

A listener in Rawlins wrote in, saying that he had heard it was a tanker of Jet Fuel that had overturned.

Below is what a jet fuel fire would look like.

It turns out that a tanker truck crashed into a parked car at about 1 am, Tuesday morning. The car had been pulled over due to a flat tire. The owner of the car is fine. The truck driver was life-flighted to a local hospital.

Why the truck lost control is not known.

Around 10,000 gallons of jet fuel spilled all over the interstate.

Imagine if all of that fuel had caught fire.

At the time WyDot was estimating that it would take 6 to 8 hours to deal with the mess.

The backup was as bad as when I-80 is closed during a winter storm.

WYDOT began letting local residents use the interstate for local business, as long as they stayed far away from the mess that had been made.

But the closure never lasted as long as they had predicted.

By around 9:30 am, or so, WyDot began lifting travel restrictions.

Thanks to those morning show listeners, the eyes and ears we have out there, for letting me know what was going on.