Most Bizarre Cargo Spills
1. Tons of Mackerel
A truck full of fish overturned and dumped its load into Northern Ireland farmer, Gordon Flinn's, field in January 2012. The tons of mackerel were piled two feet deep in places. The driver of the truck was taken to the hospital, but was not seriously injured and was able to return to the scene. The truck was removed and the road opened later that night, but the Flinns may have to put up with a fishy smell for some time.
2. 2,184 cases of Beer
Highway 401 in Mississaugua was closed on May 11, 2005 after an accident that spilled 2,184 cases of Grolsch beer. A woman driving a car swerved out of her lane and into the path of a Molson beer truck, causing the truck to roll over and the car to flip. One officer described the scene as "a sea of beer". The woman's life was most likely saved by her seatbelt and airbag. The beer was a goner.
NOTE: According to our reader Ken, the accident ocurred in the Netherlands.
Below is the article translated by our lovely reader kh:
An accident involving two freight trucks has ensured that the N36 between Mariënberg and Hardenberg had to be closed for several hours to all traffic. For over a hundred meters, the wayside (or the road) was littered with broken glass, beer crates and bottles, police said.
The reason was two cars collided around one o'clock. One of the trucks was transporting beer and swerved. Despite this, the driver was unharmed. The other driver took off and continued to drive his truck away. He later was stopped in Almelo.
The cleanup activities took several hours. The road was reopened to all traffic an hour ago.
3. Doughnuts
In October 2011, in Illinois, a truck carrying frozen baked goods and bratwurst was involved in an accident, causing its cargo to spill all over I-74. The results were delicious. The accident left 20 tons of food, including chocolate cake, doughnuts and cinnamon rolls, strewn all over the highway. Authorities were forced to close the road for seven-and-a-half hours while crews cleaned up the gooey mess.
Two people were reportedly taken to the hospital, but their injuries were not life-threatening. However, doctors did diagnose them with a case of "full stomach syndrome."
4. A Ton of Cocaine
We are not talking about the coke we enjoy to quench our thirst. This is the Class A drug. A ton of the stuff ended up on a road in Bogota, Colombia in 2007, after a drug gang's truck overturned. The cocaine was hidden in the walls and roof.
5. 29,000 Rubber Ducks
They were toys destined only to bob up and down in nothing bigger than a child's bath, but so far they have floated halfway around the world. The armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago. Since then they have traveled 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, landing in Hawaii, and even spending years frozen in an Arctic ice pack.
During their voyage, some of the ducks broke away and headed for Europe - others have surfaced in Hawaii. The ducks were among 350 containers which rolled off a ship in high seas; environmentalists are now trying to use their amazing journey to highlight the problem of overboard cargo.
6. 40,000 lbs of Ice Cream
In December 2011, 18,000 kilograms (40,000 pounds) of ice cream spilled from a semitrailer in the state of Indiana, closing two lanes of an interstate highway. The truck was trying to enter the interstate from a ramp when it tipped, spilling cartons of vanilla, caramel praline crunch, and other flavors of Edy's ice cream, onto the interstate.
The spill was expected to take as long as six hours to clean up completely. Oddee's editor would have been glad to help.
7. 14 Million Bees
Cleanup crews in Idaho had to clean up honey, and an estimated 14 million bees, that got loose after a delivery truck overturned on a highway. Several workers were stung during the first few hours of the cleanup. And some observers told about seeing a strange black cloud and roaring noise above the spill area, before realizing it was a massive swarm of bees.
A truck was hauling the bees from California to North Dakota when the driver veered off onto the shoulder, tipping more than 400 hive boxes and honey. Crews worked for two days before removing all the honey from the roadway, although deputies say a significant amount of bees were still buzzing.
That's what I call a sticky situation.
8. Shoes
On January 2, 2009, shortly before 8:00 a.m., thousands of shoes mysteriously appeared on a Miami highway. Who spilled the shoes? Nobody knows. But they disrupted traffic on the Palmetto Expressway for hours. There was no sign of a crash and no one has claimed them.
They were a strange mix of shoes... work boots, slippers, sneakers, sandals, even roller blades. A private contractor was hired to pick up the shoes and dump them in an empty field (weird). Soles4Souls, a nonprofit organization, was expected to pick them up and distribute them, probably in Haiti. If anyone does come forward they will be charged for the cleanup.
The shoes had, what seemed to be, yard sale price tags on them.
9. $80,000 of Bull Semen
It's not often a huge load of steaming bull semen spills across a highway- but that's exactly what happened when four vats fell from a bus and shut down an American interstate in Nashville, Tennessee. The wayward canisters containing the cattle sperm were first reported to police at five a.m., after motorists driving on the downtown Nashville interstate caught a whiff of a foul odor wafting across their vehicles.
A Greyhound bus ticket found near the vats alerted emergency crews as to who was responsible for their transportation, and it's understood the bus carrying the canisters was totally unaware of its lost cargo. Experts in cattle breeding and artificial insemination estimated that the four canisters were worth up to $80,000 US.
10. Two million Euros in Coins
Cash-grabbing motorists brought a road to a standstill after an Italian lorry carrying Euros overturned and spilled two million of them - in coins. The truck overturned in Foggia, southern Italy, in July 2010, shedding its contents all over the highway and leading motorists to hit the brakes and dig in.
Local police said that it was impossible to establish how much money had been stolen, as many of the Euro 1 and Euro 2 coins remained in piles on the highway. But motorists acting quickly before police arrived made off with at least Euro 10,000. The truck's driver and one passenger had suffered minor injuries. The truck was carrying the money from the Italian mint to local banks.
