Marcellus Tanker Truck Accident Kills Driver on US Route 50

One woman dead after tanker truck accident in Ritchie County

From an Article by Rodney Lamp, WBOY News 12, December 30, 2019

ELLENBORO, W.Va. – One woman is dead after an accident Sunday in Ritchie County involving a tanker truck.

According to the Ritchie County Sheriff’s Office, a brine truck was heading east on Route 50 just before the Bonds Creek Bridge, near Ellenboro. A witness reported that the truck went into the median and in between the two bridge sections. The truck fell several hundred feet into a ravine, but it did not hit either section of bridge, according to the sheriff’s office.

The truck’s driver, Rosalynn Russell, 57, of Fairmont, died at the scene, according to the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office stated that the incident was not weather related, and there was no indication that alcohol was involved. It is uncertain at this time if Russell suffered a medical issue or if the truck may have had a mechanical issue, according to the sheriff’s office.

Russell’s body has been sent to Charleston for an autopsy.

Emergency crews were alerted to the incident at about 10:25 a.m., according to the Pennsboro Volunteer Fire Department. When crews arrived, they found the tanker truck in between the Bonds Creek Bridges with confirmed entrapment.

Crews began an extensive rescue effort to reach the truck, which was down an embankment, according to the post.

Fire departments from Pennsboro, Ellenboro, Harrisville, Cairo, Smithville and Greenwood; Ritchie County EMS; the Ritchie county Office of Emergency Management; the Ritchie County Sheriff’s Office; West Virginia State Police; the West Virginia Division of Highways; and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection were involved in the incident.

See also: Tanker truck overturns, spills contents in Carroll County, Ohio, Gage Goulding, WTOV News 9 (Steubenville), November 10, 2019

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Extracted from Frackcident Injury Law:

How driver fatigue makes fracking trucks more dangerous

Fatigue is a notorious problem in the trucking industry. Safety rules exist to limit drivers’ working hours, but many companies and drivers fail to take those limits seriously. According to an industry estimate, truck driver fatigue is believed to be partly responsible for 30 to 40 percent of all truck accidents.

Here’s the capper: much of the energy industry is not covered by those limits to drivers’ work hours. These special exemptions “are routinely used to pressure workers into driving after shifts that are 20 hours or longer,” according to a New York Times report on the risks from energy industry trucking accidents.

The article goes on to warn that the expansion of fracking gas exploration will make transportation risks skyrocket. The New York Times points out that fatality rates in the energy industry are already seven times the average for all businesses, and that a third of those deaths are due to highway crashes. And, of course, that statistics doesn’t take into account the deaths of other people who are involved in traffic collisions with fracking trucks.

The U.S. Transportation Department has ruled that the workday exemption for oil and gas sites does not extend to truckers hauling sand and water on public roads to fracking sites. At this point, it’s not clear whether that ruling will help: truckers who put in 16- or 20-hour days on the site still have to drive back—in a highly fatigued condition—to their homes or hotels after their shifts are completed. And the energy companies will just hire more and more truckers, which will lead to further congestion on highways and rural roads.