Crews reopened a highway Friday morning after a deadly explosion left a sizeable crater in the road earlier this week and killed the truck’s driver, who officials said was hauling chemicals used in fertilizers.
Emergency crews on Wednesday evacuated a 1-mile area when a truck transporting ammonium nitrate — a highly explosive and regulated material used in fertilizers — caught fire and exploded that morning.
The Arkansas Department of Transportation said it reopened U.S. 278 near Camden on Friday, two days after the blast blew off the tops of nearby trees and tore a 15-foot deep crater in the middle of the road.
Officials said 63-year-old Randall McDougal of Calion had walked back to his truck just before it exploded.
HAPPENING NOW: U.S. Highway 278 in Ouachita Co. has just reopened. Many thanks to our crews for putting-in a lot of overtime, hard work, and dedication in getting the job done. Truly you are the best of the best! #ARnews #ARleg #ARtraffic pic.twitter.com/WUccyMjQbI
— Arkansas DOT (@myARDOT) March 29, 2019
The blast could be heard for miles, and Camden Fire Chief Robert Medford said shortly after that it looked "like a bomb went off.”
Three firefighters were treated for minor injuries.
The highway 10 miles west of Camden had been closed since the explosion.
Road crews worked well into the evening, bringing in bags of sand and laying new asphalt to replace the road surface that had been ripped away, said highway spokesman Danny Straessle.
Department data shows about 1,300 vehicles travel through the stretch, and traffic had been rerouted around the area while crews rebuilt the road.
“Our crews did an excellent job working until sunset two nights in a road,” Straessle said.
State officials were still investigating what caused the truck to catch fire.