The Nenana Ridge Complex is located and burning on either side of Hwy. 3 running between Fairbanks and Anchorage. Due to the volume of traffic and need for fire personnel to engage in suppression operations along the road for many miles, public traffic was being limit to piloted one way at a time traffic through the fire area and slightly beyond. This had been occuring for multiple days.
The NE end of the closure was located between the newly established fire camp and the fire. This caused fire resources to either need to wait in the pilot car line or navigate around the line by driving in the wrong direction in one of the two on coming lanes. The traffic stopage pilot car waiting point was in a curvy and hilly area of the highway so it was somewhat difficult to indetify if any oncoming traffic was headed out of the fire area.
The fire was transitioned from a Type 3 incident to a CIMT incident. Two evenings after the transition and following a transition from the DOT managing the pilot car operation to a private traffic company operating the operation, a variety of traffic cones and barricades were set up. These cones and barricades closed off the left hand lane for traffic leaving the fire area, which was also the lane fire vehicles hand been utilizing the go around the pilot car line to go into the fire area without up to an hour delay in the pilot line.
The next morning multiple resources commented on how poorly the new traffic patterns and delays were going to function for the fire resources headed to the fireline following briefing. During the main morning briefing, the topic also came up from more than one presenter. Unfortunately the message to fire resources was to continue to utilize the oncoming traffic lane to drive around the pilot car line even though there was now only one lane for both fire vehicles traveling into the fire area and misc. vehicles coming out of the fire area to utilize since barricades blocked the other lane.
During the morning commute of fire resources to the fireline, some vehicles pulled into the pilot car line to travel in with that group and avoid the need to drive potentially into oncoming traffic for safety reasons and because it was raining and delay time in the pilot lane was not an issue. 98% of the fire resources chose to travel around the pilot lane. Most fortunately travelled at a reduced speed while doing so. Many travelled through the lane the wrong way without encountering any oncoming traffic. Many also did encounter oncoming traffic resulting one near lower speed head on collision that was barely avoid. Other fire resources traveling in the wrong direction had to veer inbetween the cones and into the closed lane to allow the outgoing traffic to utilize their legal lane. Some lines of inbound fire traffic met lines of outbound traffic and needed to drive over the cone barricades to move into the closed lane. Most of the events that occurred over the hour the pilot car lane was held up occurred at low to moderate speeds and the two opposing vehicles were able to avoid colliding without each event being a collision or very near miss.
After about an hour of fire vehicles going around the pilot car traffic, three fire vehicles attempted to do the same thing others had done, but the line of pilot car vehicles began to move down the road beyond the established stop point even though the outbound line of piloted cars coming from the other side of the fire had not yet passed. The three fire vehicles traveling in the wrong lane merged into open gaps towards the front of the moving pilot car line. Approximately a 10th of a mile later the outbound pilot car and line of outbound traffic began passing. Both lines of moving traffic were passing each other in their respective lanes. About a half mile after the inbound traffic passed the established closure point the inbound line of vehicles stopped again shortly behind the second traffic company pilot truck that was blocking the lane on a sharp uphill corner. The outgoing line of vehicles continued travel out, but there were varied gaps inbetween the vehicles. After a few 10-20 second gaps, the first of the three inbound fire vehicles earlier mentioned pulled out into the oncoming traffic lane to drive around a few private vehicles and the stopped traffic company pilot truck. The first vehicle made it around fine and the second vehicle followed and also made it. The third vehicle was a manual tranmission water tender. The vehicle pulled out into the oncoming lane and very slowly attempted to gain speed going uphill to pass the vehicles. As the tender neared the back of the front most traffic company vehicle, the tender swerved about one sec before beginning to pass the traffic company truck on the left side, then went behind that traffic company vehicle, and passed it on the right shoulder of the road. At the same time the tender was starting around on the right side of the traffic company vehicle, an outbound tandem trailer semi truck traveling down hill came around the corner at approximately 50-55 mph and passed on the left side of the traffic company truck.
If the water tender had been one sec. further ahead, they would have been next to the left side of the traffic company truck and the outbound semi would have swerved off the road and hillside or, due to the speed and blind corner, more likely would have hit the tender head on, which would have caused one or both trucks to hit the traffic company pilot truck and multiple of the private vehicles in the pilot line which included both cars and tour buses. An approximately one second difference in time prevented 1-50+ people from being impacted negatively by the collision. |
