LEHI — Josie Bertrand and a friend left Taylorsville around 1 p.m. Saturday hoping to get back to their Cedar City apartment before dark.
Jenn and Andrew Jensen left their Taylorsville home around 11 a.m., thinking they had plenty of time to get to a friend’s wedding in Payson by 1 p.m.
And Hailie Stokes left Provo to meet her cousin in Salt Lake City about 1:30 pm.
All of them were among the hundreds of motorists who found themselves delayed or detoured after a semitrailer hauling butane rolled on northbound I-15 near Lehi at 10;23 a.m. Saturday, prompting officials to shut down the entire I-15 freeway for about 10 hours.
The driver of the semi sustained minor injuries and was transported to a local hospital, according to Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Brady Zaugg.
In addition to stopping and snarling traffic until the wreck was cleaned and cleared, the crash also prompted police to evacuate a nearby apartment complex.
“Basically, we’ve got a giant mess where we’ve got traffic trying to be diverted off the interstate, and we’re just trying to clear the area in case something were to happen,” Zaugg said.
Butane is flammable and explosive.
People located within a 1⁄4-mile radius around the area of the rollover, on the east side of the freeway, were evacuated from buildings as a precaution. Those in one apartment complex in that area — the only residential building — were relocated to a meetinghouse of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at 700 W. 2630 North, said Cameron Boyle, assistant city administrator for Lehi.
Boyle did not have an estimate on how many people needed to be evacuated.
Both directions of I-15 were shut down in the area as a precaution, Zaugg said. Southbound traffic was diverted to state Route 92, and northbound traffic was diverted to Lehi’s Main Street.
Northbound I-15 wasn’t opened until after 8 p.m.
That meant Bertrand wouldn’t be arriving in Cedar City before dark.
“We were just barely getting out of Lehi before dark, so that plan went out the window,” she said. ‘We got off the interstate about 3:20 or 3:30, and we spent another hour of just driving around Lehi trying to find the place where the freeway was open. ... There were thousands of people trying to scramble different directions through Lehi, but different roads were closed.”
She recalled thinking she had found a route back to I-15 southbound, but then she’d meet an officer signaling them to turn around and search for another route. That was the same experience the Jensens had as they tried desperately to find a route that would get them to the Payson temple.
“We thought we’d have tons of time,” Jensen said. “We were using Google Maps and it popped up with the accident, and it told us to get off at Thanksgiving Point.”
Unfortunately every route Google Maps directed them to was blocked by law enforcement, and after two hours in the car, they decided to send their best wishes and get some lunch.
“We were so frustrated after a while,” she said. “We just said, ‘Let’s turn around and go home.’”
They managed to cross under the freeway and get onto the frontage road near the Traverse Mountain Outlet Mall, and that allowed them to travel north.
“We were all dressed up,” Jensen said of deciding to try and salvage the afternoon. “So we decided, ‘Let’s at least go out on a date at 1 o’clock in the afternoon.’”
Stokes made it north to meet her family, but it took her an hour and a half to travel from Provo to Lehi. She was warned about the accident, so she exited the freeway in Lehi and traveled north on Redwood Road.
Bertrand said the detours meant burning a lot more fuel than normal.
“We pulled into home in Cedar with the gas light on,” she said. ‘It was definitely crazy.”
Zaugg said no other accidents were reported in connection with the road closure, but there were ‘lots of angry drivers honking horns.”
Contributing: Dan Bammes