PENDLETON — A Pendleton man suffered serious injuries Wednesday, Aug. 25, on the eastbound side of Interstate 84 when he crashed his motorcycle into a passenger car that was stopped because of a semitrailer crash miles ahead.

Oregon State Police reported a helicopter ambulance flew Stephen Chandler Peterson, 71, from the scene.

OSP Lt. Karl Farber of the Pendleton Area Command said traffic on I-84 began backing up after a semitrailer full of 50-gallon barrels of apple juice concentrate crashed at 7:23 a.m. on the bridge at Meacham near milepost 238.

The driver of the semi, a 28-year-old man from Tacoma, fell asleep, and the big rig hit an impact barrier in the road construction zone. The driver over-corrected, Farber said, and the tractor-trailer spun, flipped and got hung up on the bridge, stopping short of going off.

But the real problem was the mass of apple juice concentrate.

Farber said the substance covered the surface of the bridge, making it slippery and sticky and a priority to clean up before traffic could again pass through safety. Road construction is underway in the area, and the Oregon Department of Transportation has reduced travel on the bridge to one lane of eastbound and one lane of westbound traffic. The wreck shut down both directions of travel on the freeway between Ontario and Pendleton.

Removing the concentrate was the main reason the closure lasted as long as it did, Farber said. ODOT reported the freeway was open again at 5:08 p.m.

“We knew we were going to be shut down a long time, so we closed at the 216 for access to services at Arrowhead (Truck Plaza),” he said. “We had a lot of traffic backing up on the freeway.”

The traffic backed up to about milepost 213, about three miles east of Pendleton, where at 11:43 a.m. Peterson and the Harley Davidson motorcycle he was operating crashed into a Toyota Avalon.

The crash threw Peterson from the motorcycle, according to a report from state police, which then collided with a semitrailer on the shoulder of the freeway.

Farber said Petserson was not able to recount what happened at the scene. Medics from the Umatilla Tribal Fire Department responded and stabilized him. State police shut down westbound traffic near the crash so a Life Flight helicopter could land and fly him to a hospital.

Farber said OSP did not know that destination, nor Peterson’s condition, but was following up on that.