<\/p>\n
The Colorado State Patrol is investigating a two-vehicle crash that resulted in one death on U.S. Highway 491.<\/p>\n
About 7:35 p.m. Wednesday, a black 2011 Dodge pickup was headed northbound toward Cortez on U.S. 491 at milepost 5, south of the U.S. Highway 160 junction, the State Patrol said. It collided with a semitrailer hauling onions and potatoes, and both vehicles caught fire.<\/p>\n
The Dodge driver died at the scene, and the driver of the semi escaped without serious injury.<\/p>\n
U.S. 491 remained closed from 8:05 p.m. to 11:53 p.m. for investigation and vehicle recovery, at which time it reopened to traffic.<\/p>\n
A hazmat team was called out because of concerns with the semitrailer. The semi remained on-scene for later recovery. The name of the driver of the pickup was being withheld for notification of next of kin.<\/p>\n
Multiple agencies in Montezuma County, including several engines from the Cortez Fire Protection District, responded to the crash site.<\/p>\n
On Thursday morning, Kent Baxstrom, maintenance supervisor for Colorado Department of Transportation Region 5 Section 3, surveyed the scene and said he found no damage to infrastructure on U.S. 491. The burned-out semitrailer was about 450 feet south of the wrecked pickup and debris lined the road. He said a CDOT plow helped clear the highway Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Baxstrom said he spoke to a tow company, and he expected both vehicles to be removed by Saturday. The job would likely involve a backhoe and tow truck.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t just load it up,\u201d Baxstrom said.<\/p>\n
State Patrol Trooper Gary Cutler said he did not know the identity of the pickup driver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
team, Cortez firefighters respond to scene<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13,144],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-towaoc"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97082"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}