2 Wash. firefighters killed in off-duty truck accident

By Alana Listoe
The Independent Record

BUTTE, Mont. — Two people were killed and one seriously injured in a single-vehicle accident Saturday morning near Butte.

Officials responded to the single-vehicle accident at 8:30 a.m. Saturday at mile marker 211 on I-90 eastbound.

A Ford F-350 pulling a trailer jack-knifed and the front end of the truck hit the guardrail, Montana Highway Patrol Trooper Tammy Perkins said.

The vehicle was pushed onto the guardrail, and when the trailer swung around it pushed the truck off the bridge, Perkins said.

"The truck hung briefly before it separated from the trailer and landed on its roof," she said.

The driver, Douglas Ray Jacobsen, 49, and front passenger, Richard Daniel Streissguth, 45, both firefighters from Ridgefield, Wash., were killed, Perkins said. Another passenger, a minor, was seriously injured, and all three were related, she added.

Alcohol is not suspected to be a cause. Perkins said that speed is always a contributing factor but the main factor was weather.