Link Traffic Stuck on Freeway, Literally
Monday, June 14, 2004
It's bad enough when an overturned truck spills milk or beer onto a freeway. It's worse when it spills glue.
One thousand gallons of carpet glue 3-inches thick covered the northbound lanes of I-15 near Mesquite, Nev., all day on June 2, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
A tractor-trailer driver fell asleep at the wheel at 2:15 a.m., went off the road and flipped his rig on an embankment, said Angie Wolff of the Nevada Highway Patrol (search).
"He's fine," she said. "He's really feeling bad about falling asleep. He's lucky he's alive."
A few other big rigs managed to navigate around the mess, but authorities quickly closed the northbound lanes after it became clear the glue fumes posed a safety hazard.
Twenty members of a state hazardous-materials team spent hours shoveling glue in order to free the truck and its trailer, which were firmly stuck to the roadway.
Wearing hazmat suits in the hot desert sun, they spent several more hours dumping glue into five-gallon buckets to make sure the freeway could reopen the following morning.
Wolff said the driver would be cited for the accident, and his company would be billed for the cost of the cleanup.
Mesquite is about 60 miles northeast of Las Vegas on the Arizona state line.