STAGECOACH, Nev. (AP) - Four people were killed and three people injured Tuesday in a fiery crash involving multiple trucks and a trailer hauling livestock that blocked part of a Nevada highway for several hours.
Two pickups and a one-ton truck - all towing some sort of trailer - were involved in the head-on crash just before 9 a.m. on U.S. Highway 50, Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Chuck Allen said.
One cow also was killed. About a half-dozen others scattered and remained at large Tuesday afternoon as authorities closed off the highway near a construction zone in the high desert about 25 miles east of Carson City.
The highway remained closed but within a few hours, traffic was moving eastbound around a bypass lane, Allen said.
Two trucks were headed east when the livestock trailer on the lead truck apparently fish-tailed and the driver lost control, crossing into the oncoming lane and colliding with the one-ton truck, Allen said.
Two trucks were engulfed in flames. Two people in the westbound truck died. The driver of the lead pickup was killed and a passenger seriously burned, Allen said. The passenger was flown by helicopter to Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno where no condition report was available.
Two people riding in the other truck sustained minor to moderate injuries and were taken by ambulance to the regional hospital, he said.
Allen credited construction crews with helping rescue the burn victim.
"It is an active construction zone. We were fortunate to have some first-on-the-scene folks get that one person out of the truck," he told KOLO-TV.