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MEDFORD, Okla. - A train slammed into a propane tanker truck in north-central Oklahoma on Friday, triggering a huge explosion that killed two people and injured a third, authorities said.<br><br>"It blew the semi tanker apart," Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. George Brown said. "The cab was on one side of the train and the tanker on the other."<br><br>The OHP identified the two fatalities as Union Pacific train conductor Larry Benny Williams of Oklahoma City and engineer Richard D. Pardarvis of Anadarko.<br><br>The injured truck driver, 52-year-old Dennis Wayne Etherton, was flown by medical helicopter to St. Francis Hospital in Wichita, Kan., with third-degree burns over at least 50 percent of his body.<br><br>The crash occurred at 9:20 a.m. on U.S. 81, about 20 miles south of the Kansas border near Medford, Brown said.<br><br>Union Pacific spokeswoman Raquel Espinoza-Williams said the truck was on the train tracks when the locomotive slammed into it.<br><br>The two-person crew sounded the horn and tried to stop the train 140 feet before impact while going about 37 mph, said Donna Kush, another Union Pacific spokeswoman, said. The train had two engines and 76 cars.<br><br>Mike Honigsberg, emergency management director for neighboring Garfield County, said the crew's actions prevented the train from becoming a runaway after they died.<br><br>"In my opinion, that was a heroic effort because if they didn't, there was nothing to stop that train between here and Enid," about 35 miles south of Medford. "They probably prevented another major catastrophe," he said.<br><br>Honigsberg said investigators believe the truck driver had just filled the tanker at the ConocoPhillips LP gas facility next to the accident site. The liquid propane facility was shut down briefly.<br><br>All that was left of the locomotive was a burned shell. The explosion blackened the first three cars and left a large crater in the ground.<br><br>The train was traveling from Wichita, Kan., to Fort Worth, Texas, with a load of flour, wheat and some flammable substances, Espinoza-Williams said. None of the flammable substances leaked from the train cars.<br><br>Brown said some of the cars were hauling ethanol and methanol.<br><br>