Emergency services are reportedly finding it difficult to access the scene after it is said a tractor loaded with transformers was involved in a crash in a tunnel in Green River, Wyoming
At least two people are thought to have died after a crash in a tunnel led to an explosion.
Multiple vehicles, including a tractor, collided in the tunnel in Green River, Wyoming. A tractor trailer loaded with transformers was involved in the smash and this led to the “raging” blast, it is understood.
The tunnel could give way, authorities told reporters. Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Jason Mower told Cowboy State Daily in the US: “We are containing the scene now because there’s nothing else we can do, given the conditions inside the tunnel. Both the nature of the fire and now the structural integrity inside the tunnel itself.”
Two people are believed to have died and at least seven people have been rushed to hospital. However, the operation to find and rescue any other casualties is difficult, authorities say, due to the dangerous scene. Fire crews initially struggled to access the scene, which is on the westbound of Interstate 80, a rural main road in the landlocked state in the west of the US. Mr Mower added: “Basically, we treat it as a giant crime scene.”
Pictures show thick black smoke billow out of the narrow tunnel which takes the Interstate 80 under mountain terrain near the city of Green River. Lorries appear to have been involved in the crash, believed to have happened at around midday local time (7pm UK).
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David Brewer and his daughter Alyssa witnessed the horror unfold. David, from Kemmerer, Wyoming, said: “We heard and felt the huge explosions. They went on for 30 to 45 minutes.” His daughter added: “It was very, very scary.”
Jennifer Lynn Carr said she could see a plume of smoke from her home in Green River itself, a couple of miles off the main road which runs east to west into Utah.
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