‘Not a usual thing’: The complicated recovery of a semi that ended up in Turnagain Arm

The semitruck that careened off the Seward Highway late Tuesday posed a bizarre and uniquely Alaskan sight by Wednesday morning.

The red cab was partly submerged in the glacial-gray water, its trailer still attached. Both stayed upright after the driver’s terrifying trip into the water.

The whole thing unfolded along a scenic stretch of road next to Turnagain Arm, the narrow waterway at the north end of Cook Inlet with notoriously risky mudflats and one of North America’s largest tidal swings.

Authorities said the driver was rescued and hospitalized. A family member on Wednesday said he was OK.

But what about that truck?

The semi and trailer were extricated from the mudflats Wednesday evening, a technical endeavor that involved a total of four heavy-duty tow trucks, two cranes, a hazmat response team, several rescue swimmers, and a lot of really foul weather.

“This was not a usual thing,” said Girdwood Fire and Rescue Chief Michelle Weston. “I would say semi in the Inlet is not on my bingo card anywhere.”

It’s not yet clear what caused the driver to veer off the highway. Officials said he went off the road in the area of a road construction project where the guardrail had been removed. Responders described the conditions at the time as windy and rainy with poor visibility.

The Anchorage Police Department is investigating the incident, spokeswoman Renee Oistad said Thursday. No citations have been filed, Oistad said. The company named on the side of the cab is On Demand trucking in Anchorage. A company representative put a reporter on hold Thursday and then the call disconnected.

The driver has not been identified.

The area where the truck went into the water is part of a state transportation project involving realignment and bridge replacement between Ingram Creek and Twentymile River, according to Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities regional spokesman Justin Shelby.

Crews finishing up a bike path component of the project are taking out and then replacing sections of guardrail as they go, Shelby said.

The area where the guardrail is removed is posted with a reduced speed of 45 mph, he said. “We’ve got signs and lights and those barrel cones all through that section as well.”

The response began after 10 p.m. Tuesday when the fire department got a report of a “sinking vehicle” north of Twentymile River, according to a statement posted Wednesday. Rescue crews pulled the driver from the cab.

Around 1 a.m. Wednesday, Vulcan Towing and Recovery president Justin Creech said, he became the on-scene recovery coordinator with a phone call about the semi off the highway and in the water.

Creech said he contracted with Jenwar Towing & Recovery out of Soldotna to help with what clearly was going to be a big job. He also brought in a company called Republic Services to handle any environmental protections that might be necessary.

Creech said the driver’s status was his first thought when he got to the scene Wednesday morning. He was relieved to hear the man was out of the hospital and improving.

“Then, looking at it, my second thought was, ‘Man, this is going to be cold, it’s going to be wet, and it’s going to be muddy,’” he said in an interview Thursday.

He wasn’t wrong.

The extrication of the semi involved about two dozen people contending with howling winds that blew the pouring rain sideways — “classic Turnagain Arm weather,” as Weston put it — and the frigid waters of the Arm itself, not to mention the natural deadline of the tide.

One of the biggest challenges, Creech said, was the elevation change from the road to the vehicle: there were two 10-foot drops between the highway and the semi, plus a ledge created by the receding tide.

The truck’s trailer held no cargo, fortunately, but it did contain about 10,000 pounds of empty fish totes, he said.

“It was slowly sinking,” Creech said. “Silt was filling up the engine compartment. The trailer was filling with water.”

The tide was a major factor in the recovery planning. As the water rose overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, Weston said, rescue crews said the truck started “moving kind of like a bathtub toy. The tides are so strong that it was moving the semi.”

The recovery effort started around 4 p.m., timed with low tide.

Three rescue swimmers from the Girdwood fire department donned cold-water drysuits and attached straps to the front and back of the semi, according to Weston. Creech said the swimmer at the back of the truck tied himself to the trailer as he battled the pull of the water.

“He reached down, probably it’d have to be three or four feet under the water ... and got it lassoed around the back of the trailer,” he said. “I’m amazed he even got that done because the current was very strong.”

Then the straps around the semi were hooked up to two cranes that “sucked it far enough up to the bank” that the truck could be reached by two wreckers, Creech said. Those two wreckers were attached to two more to make sure they didn’t slide in the water themselves, he said.

Using a combination of the cranes and wreckers, crews lifted the cab and trailer off the ground and brought the whole thing up onto the road, Creech said. The disabled vehicle was en route to Anchorage by about 9 p.m. It was at the Vulcan yard on Thursday.

The highway was fully reopened by 9:30 p.m.

Drivers stuck in traffic for several hours on the highway may have not liked it, Weston said, but there was no other time to do the job given the fast-moving tide.

She said she’s responded to occasional calls involving passenger vehicles that ended up in Turnagain Arm. Some never got pulled out including one that kept floating back to the highway after going in the water.

The driver deserves credit for keeping the truck upright, Weston said, and the recovery crews did an impressive job with a complex extraction.

Creech, whose family has owned the towing company since 1991, said the semi in Turnagain Arm was one of just a few recovery operations like it that he’s experienced in his time towing in Alaska.

“This was tricky because of the height of the road and the drop to the water. It was a long ways down there,” he said. “It was definitely among the top five.”