Twelve Thousand Gallons and One Driver: The Night a Tanker Went Into Deer Creek
At 7:12 p.m. on May 20, 2024, a semi-truck hauling a tanker full of liquid propane was heading south on State Route 189 near mile marker 24. Something went wrong — a misjudgment, a mechanical failure, a moment of inattention — and the rig jackknifed. It tore through a guardrail and went into Deer Creek Reservoir, cab first, the tanker following it in.
The driver was Richard Bowman, 62, of Torrey, Utah. He was inside the cab when it submerged. Divers searched through the night. The recovery effort extended into the following day, with dive crews and salvage teams working in murky water, trying to locate a man in a submerged cab at the bottom of a reservoir that serves as a drinking water source for communities across Utah County and the southern Wasatch Front. Bowman’s body was found inside the cab on Tuesday afternoon when the truck was finally lifted out.
The environmental dimension of this incident was significant. The tanker carried just under 12,000 gallons of propane. When the guardrail tore into the tank on impact, an estimated 80 to 90 percent of that propane vented into the atmosphere — a massive, visible gas release that first responders had to account for in their safety planning. What stayed in the water was the truck itself, and its diesel fuel. An estimated 130 gallons of diesel leaked into Deer Creek Reservoir. Highway 189 was closed for nearly 24 hours. The reservoir, a critical water supply, had a commercial vehicle sitting on its floor overnight.
This is not an abstract pollution concern. Deer Creek Reservoir feeds water treatment systems that supply Provo, Orem, and surrounding communities. Diesel fuel in a reservoir is not a minor contamination event — it is a direct threat to the quality of water that families drink. The speed with which salvage crews moved to remove the truck was the right response. But it raises the question that Fathom Restoration was built to answer: what about the vehicles, vessels, and debris that do not generate a major news story, that do not close a highway, and that do not get lifted out the next day?
For every tanker that makes headlines, there are smaller incidents — cars off boat ramps, capsized vessels, debris dumped intentionally — that slip below the surface and stay there. The reservoir holds them silently, a slow accumulation of metal and fuel and synthetic material degrading into a water source that no one thinks to check. Submerged vehicle removal from Utah’s lakes is not a specialty service — it is a public health function that our organization has made its mission.
Richard Bowman deserved better than the highway that night gave him. Deer Creek Reservoir deserved better too. Fathom Restoration is here to make sure that when something goes into a Utah lake, we have the capacity and the mandate to bring it back out. Learn more and support our work 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.
