Update – 10 a.m. – A tractor-trailer truck overturned on the Capital Beltway Friday morning, killing the driver and leading to extended closures on the highway between the Connecticut Avenue and Rockville Pike exits in Bethesda.
The crash happened shortly before 5 a.m. and police closed down both the outer loop and inner loop for hours as crews cleared the highway of debris and truck fuel that had spilled. By 10 a.m. lanes on the outer loop and inner loop had all been reopened.
The Maryland State Police confirmed the driver died as a result of injuries suffered in the crash, but hasn’t released the man's name. Police found the driver unconscious at the scene after he was ejected from the cab in the crash. Most of the truck settled in the outer loop, with the trailer stretched across the travel lanes. The driver was transported to Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
Police said the crash left multiple pieces of the concrete barrier dividing the highway spread across lanes of the inner and outer loops. The truck's fuel tank ruptured, causing diesel fuel to leak onto the roadway, according to police.
Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Services spokesman Pete Piringer said at 7:30 a.m. that several lanes of the inner loop were getting by, but all lanes on the outer loop remain blocked. At 9:30 a.m., lanes on the outer loop block remained blocked, although the truck had been uprighted. By 9:45 a.m. all lanes on the inner loop were reopened as crews began to open lanes on the outer loop.
Traffic remained backed up on the Beltway and throughout the area around 9:30 a.m., especially on parallel routes such as East West Highway, according to Google Maps:
Correction tractor trailer initially impacted from outer loop, overhead sign possibly split the two pic.twitter.com/arn3U50kDE
— Brad Freitas (@NewsChopperBrad) February 19, 2016
