E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Arizona Department of Transportation
Westbound Interstate 10 in Phoenix, already a notoriously congested freeway, was closed after a semi-trailer overturned Wednesday, Feb. 13, and spilled French vanilla coffee creamer.
One of the busiest interstates in the U.S. was closed for 12 hours Wednesday after a semi-trailer transporting French vanilla coffee creamer overturned in Phoenix, coating more than 150 feet of the highway with a white slick of delicious-smelling traffic hazard.
The trailer crashed into a guardrail and overturned on westbound Interstate 10 at about 1 a.m., NBC station KPNX reported. Authorities said the driver suffered only minor injuries.
The accident happened at a massive interchange called the Mini Stack, where I-10, a state highway and a state bypass all converge in northeastern Phoenix. It's the busiest interchange in Arizona, and a Forbes magazine study in 2007 identified it as the fourth most congested "traffic trap" in the country.
Authorities initially were more concerned that the truck spilled diesel fuel, but that turned out to be a secondary issue. The bigger problem was the white slick of coffee creamer that oozed over 150 feet of freeway, Carrick Cook, a spokesman for the state Public Safety Department, told The Arizona Republic.
The freeway reopened around 1 p.m. (3 p.m. ET). Meanwhile, a separate accident on the bypass was aggravating delays for drivers bailing out on I-10, the Republic reported.
Leave a Comment:
It's about time we had some "delicious smelling" traffic hazards. And who's gonna invent the portable "in car" coffee maker? You know it's coming. Is "Got Coffee?" a copyright infringement? Too soon?
"I-10 got creamed. How about you?"
DAMN i MISSED IT!!!!!!!!
12 hours? What kind of idiots do they have in Arizona? Get a fire truck out there, hose it down and in one hour later the road is open. Hello?
Too bad there wasn't an expresso tanker nearby.
How do we know it was French vanilla? Did it give up without a struggle?
LOL!!!
Or maybe it was the outrageous accent. (Monty Python's Holy Grail)
French Vanilla? Just another example of a good American coffee creamer job being taken by a foreigner.
In powder form it can cause lung damage.
In liquid form, full of trans fats, it can also cause cancer.
If you ran over all the little plastic cows with your car; I wonder if they would make a popping noise like bubble wrap? How much fun would that be!?
Not nearly as much fun as putting bubble wrap in the bottom of the cat box before adding litter.
Acorns in the lunchroom microwave - under a napkin.
Or near as much fun replacing kitty litter with pop rocks. Riddle me that!
WOW, that trailer got creamed...
Guess the sleepy driver forgot to drink his coffee before getting underway.
Leave it to the French to disrupt traffic.
They aren't kidding about the smell...I drove by this on the 51 this morning and could smell it. I had a heads up from the traffic report so had the window down...but better smell than most accidents.
I live downtown and it STILL smells!
If it was Irish Cream, I'd have caught the first flight there...
Hilarious! Had a similar incident with a semi full of cooking oil jugs turning into the Kroger's grocery store on Suder Ave. in Point Place in Toledo, OH. Driver took the turn too fast, and toppled over when going up the slight elevation to the parking lot. Actually had to end up cutting out the effected road and replacing it completely!!! Guess they couldn't scrub away the massive amount of slick oil that soaked into the road...
Creamer Porn in Arizona! Right MSN!
A client called me one time because one of his semi rigs had turned over in Houston,TX, full of frozen chicken. The frozen chicken spilled all over one lane of traffic and the access road. Once news got out, the poor people of Houston were there, filling their car trunks with frozen chicken. One guy was heard to say "this is a gift from God". I still laugh about that......guess one person's accident was another person's gift from God! Follow up newscast: "Houstons are eating more chicken than ever."
And the road reopened in record time I bet. Costing the city nothing in cleanup expenses.
I remember MANY years ago an Anheiser Bush TT/TL that wrecked on I64 out from Williamsburg, VA. He'd just picked up a load from the brewery TL overturned. The whole load had to be off-loaded and returned to the brewery to be destroyed!!! Talk about a waste!!!! Everyone there wanted to save it!
JKLD,
"He'd just picked up a load from the brewery TL overturned."
Did the beer spill, and were any candidates for AA down on the ground licking it up off the pavement?
Mickey,
LOL. There were some pallets of broken bottles, BUT a lot of the load survived intact. HOWEVER, because it had been 'jostled' around, the integrety of it was compromised (it was explained by one of the officials). AB sent another T/TL out and took everything back to the the brewrey. :-(
I know there were a LOT of unhappy workers out there cleaning up. However, if I remember right, a few cases didn't make it back to the brewery. :-)
Looks like Peter North performed a "drive-by shooting."
Talk about cream pie.
Hopefully not the dry kind. Have your ever seen the Mythbusters where it exploded?
Better call Hazmat.
It's Obama's fault! I had to say it lol.
Aw, crap! I was hoping for one posting run without politics!
From the article: "It's the busiest interchange in Arizona"
That really isn't saying too much since there aren't a hell of a lot of interchanges in Arizona to begin with. The only two big cities are Phoenix and Tucson, and neither is on the scale of New York City or Chicago or Los Angeles or Dallas/Fort Worth or anything. At least this should keep the street sweepers employed.
Funniest accident I saw was about 30 years ago when a pretzel truck tried to swerve but hit into a beer truck and both vehicles over turned. And yes both trucks spilled some of their load out over the intersection.