The 40-ton water tanker that rolled down a Bountiful hillside Thursday night, demolishing a home, was not equipped with emergency brakes, a Utah Highway Patrol investigator reported.
The tanker's brakes were set when it was parked, UHP investigator Garth Toone reported, but as the air in the hydraulic system bled off, the brakes gradually released.The tanker rolled off the LDS temple construction site, down about 200 feet of oakbrush covered hillside and crashed into the back of the Paul Peterson home at 295 S. 1500 East.
The Petersons were not home when the tanker crashed through the rear wall of their home at about 8 p.m., around 21/2 hours after it was filled with 2,000 gallons of water and parked for the night on the construction site above.
Toone said the tanker was apparently parked on a slight incline and as the brakes released, it started rolling.
"Under normal procedures, they usually park these on level ground, or nose to tail with other pieces of equipment, or against a hillside or pit," said Toone, who was called in by the Bountiful Police Department to investigate the tanker's braking system.
Toone's report also noted that three of the tanker's four brakes were out of adjustment, but he said that would have affected it only when it was being operated, not when it was parked.
Investigators first thought vandals might have been responsible for releasing the brake, starting the tanker down the hill. But Toone and Bountiful detectives say there is no evidence of tampering on the tanker.
Toone said his investigation is almost complete, but he is checking to see if the tanker, owned by Harper Excavating, was built as a tanker or if an earth scraper was altered for use as a water tanker, with the tank installed later.
While not built with parking brakes either, an earth scraper usually has the scraper blade lowered to the ground when it's parked for the night, Toone said, which holds it in place.
"I believe, from my personal findings and at this point, that this was an accident," Toone said. "There certainly was no intent."
Toone also said he's surprised, with no emergency brake and the way the air bleeds out of the hydraulic system, that a similar accident hasn't happened before at other construction sites.
It was, he said, an "accident waiting to happen. I hope other companies will take the initiative and look at their own equipment," Toone said.
The UHP investigator said he's forwarded his report to the Bountiful police for any further action.