A transport driver is dead and cleanup continues after a fuel tanker bound for Prudhoe Bay rolled down an embankment on the Dalton Highway early Friday morning.
The driver, Joy Wiebe, was a Fairbanks resident who had been a transport driver in Alaska for years. She had worked for Alaska-based Colville, Inc. for about four months, according to a statement from the company.
Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation is monitoring the incident as the tanker Wiebe was hauling had several thousand gallons of diesel fuel in it.
Nearly 1,780 gallons of that diesel spilled; all but a few hundred gallons of it has been recovered. Neither the state nor the company identified what might have caused the accident.
Colville Inc. is working on a plan for the site that includes soil sampling and environmental remediation. The state identified fiber optic cables and a gas pipeline near the spill site that may be impacted. The spill is in the tundra and could also threaten caribou, fox and migratory birds.
Rashah McChesney is a photojournalist turned radio journalist who has been telling stories in Alaska since 2012. Before joining Alaska's Energy Desk, she worked at Kenai's Peninsula Clarion and the Juneau bureau of the Associated Press. She is a graduate of Iowa State University's Greenlee Journalism School and has worked in public television, newspapers and now radio, all in the quest to become the Swiss Army knife of storytellers.
