BUCKSPORT – An unidentified truck driver was hospitalized with injuries believed to be non-life threatening after his tanker carrying several thousand gallons of clay slurry collided with a freight train at the Verso paper mill on Saturday, a company spokesman said.
The train was moving at a slow speed away from the mill when the collision occurred at about 3:30 p.m. A hazardous materials team from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection was arrived at 7 p.m. supervising a cleanup operation that was expected to take several hours.
“There is no noticeable spill,” Verso spokesman Bill Cohen said.
The H.O. Bouchard tanker was taking slurry into the plant from Searsport at the plant’s north gate entrance as the Pan Am train was apparently pulling away. As it was being pushed, the tanker hit a stub from an old utility pole and rolled over, Cohen said.
The driver was taken to a nearby hospital as is required by Bouchard company regulations, Cohen said.
As of 7:30 p.m., Bucksport police had blocked one of the two southbound lanes into the plant as truck company and environmental workers began to empty the tanker into another Bouchard truck. The Pan Am train’s engine was trapped on the company side of the railroad spur.
A long line of freight cars sat on either side of the accident. It was unclear how many cars were attached to the train when the accident occurred.
Cohen described the accident as the first of its kind he had dealt with in more than 10 years with the company.
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- Police in Bucksport are investigating an accident in which a train and a tanker truck collided Saturday.
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