The Cab Was Still Submerged When They Found Him
The Utah Highway Patrol confirmed it on Tuesday afternoon: the body of Richard Bowman, 62, of Torrey, had been recovered from the submerged cab of his semi-truck. Dive teams had worked through the night. A salvage crew had lifted the rig out of Deer Creek Reservoir's shallow edge. And when the cab broke the surface, Bowman was still inside.
The sequence of events that led to his death began the evening before at mile marker 24 on State Route 189 — a stretch of highway that runs tight against the eastern shore of Deer Creek Reservoir, separated from the water by a guardrail that a jackknifing semi proved was not enough. The tanker Bowman was hauling carried just under 12,000 gallons of liquid propane. When the rig punched through the barrier and entered the water, the collision with the guardrail ruptured the tank, releasing the majority of that propane into the air in a pressure event that first responders had to treat as a hazmat scene before they could focus on rescue.
The diesel in the truck's fuel tanks — approximately 130 gallons — did not vent into the air. It went into the water. Deer Creek Reservoir is not a recreational lake in isolation; it is a managed water supply serving Provo, Orem, and surrounding communities via the Central Utah Water Conservancy District. When diesel enters that reservoir, it enters the upstream reach of a drinking water system used by hundreds of thousands of people.
Highway 189 was closed in both directions from Monday evening through most of Tuesday — nearly 24 hours during which the submerged truck sat in the reservoir, its diesel spreading, its cab sealed with a man inside. The urgency of the recovery was enormous and the teams who worked it performed under extraordinary conditions. But urgency is reactive. What Fathom Restoration is building is proactive capacity — the ability to address submerged vehicles and debris in Utah's waterways before they become the kind of crisis that closes a major highway and threatens a municipal water supply.
Richard Bowman was a truck driver from a small town in Wayne County doing a job that moves critical fuel supplies across the state. His death deserves to be more than a data point in a discussion about waterway contamination. But it is also true that the truck he was driving sat in a drinking water reservoir for more than 18 hours, leaking diesel, while the systems we have in place scrambled to respond. We can do better. We must do better. Support Fathom Restoration's mission at fathomrestoration.org.
Fathom Restoration is a Utah nonprofit dedicated to recovering submerged vehicles, vessels, and debris from Utah’s lakes and waterways. Donate, volunteer, or report a submerged vehicle at fathomrestoration.org.
