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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.