Times Staff Report
A Gary man died Tuesday morning when his tanker truck rolled over on the westbound entrance ramp to the Indiana Toll Road at 141st Street.
A Lake County coroner's spokesman said Eddie Cagle, 54, of the 4800 block of Noble Street, was dead of blunt force trauma at 7:23 a.m. at the scene.
Hammond firefighters called to the Toll Road at 6 a.m. were joined by the department's hazardous materials team and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, according to Fire Battalion Chief Michael Opinker.
Firefighters extricated Cagle from the tanker. The tanker's contents had to be pumped into another tanker called to the scene, Opinker said.
The tanker truck had been carrying 4,000 gallons of ferric chloride, a corrosive used in water filtration. A spill of that quantity into the Cal-Sag Channel would have turned the area orange and killed the vegetation, Opinker said.
