Traffic Tie-ups Not So Sweet—

Flipped Truck Spills Chocolate Onto Interstate 84

By Andrew Gorosko

SOUTHBURY — A tractor-trailer truck driver who lost control of his fully-loaded vehicle Monday morning, while driving eastward on Interstate 84 in the area between Exit 14’s off-ramp and on-ramp, created a gigantic chocolatey mess on the highway, when his sugary cargo of M&M’s, Snickers, and Milky Way bars spilled all over the pavement as the truck flipped over onto its side.

State police said trucker Ronald Alvarez, 38, of Mountain Top, Penn., was driving a Freightliner truck in the right lane of two lanes about 7 am, when he lost control of the vehicle and it traveled off the roadway. The truck then collided with some steel guardcabling and rolled over onto its side, spilling its candy contents onto the highway and adjacent areas, according to state police.

The vehicle came to rest perpendicular to the highway, blocking all lanes of eastbound I-84. It would be about nine hours before the highway fully reopened to traffic.

Both eastbound lanes of I-84 in that area were closed until about 10 am, when wrecker crews were able to move the flipped truck to allow one lane of the highway to reopen to traffic, state police said.

At times during the day, traffic on eastbound I-84 backed up to the vicinity of Exit 9 in Hawleyville. The heavy backups caused motorists to take alternate routes to their destinations via secondary roads, causing traffic congestion on those streets.

In Southbury, state police detoured eastbound traffic off the highway and onto local roads to avoid the accident scene.

Work crews unloaded the part of the candy cargo that remained inside the truck’s trailer.

A state Department of Consumer Protection inspector declared the truck’s cargo a loss and prohibited its consumption, state police said.

The heat of the August day caused the candy that had fallen onto the asphalt pavement to melt, resulting in masses of chocolate adhering to the road, state police said.

The Milky Way bars were the most troublesome items to deal with because their caramel content created a gooey mess, according to state police.

Workers spread flaked absorbent material onto the spilled, molten chocolate to make its removal simpler. Work crews then used a street sweeper to lift the chocolate off the highway, restoring its paved surface to conditions safe for high speed travel, according to state police.

State Department of Transportation (DOT) workers replaced the guardcabling that was destroyed in the accident.

At about 4:05 pm, both lanes of eastbound I-84 were reopened to traffic, after the flipped truck had been moved and the chocolatey mess that the accident had created had been generally cleaned up.

Work crews were on the scene Tuesday morning, cleaning up residual amounts of chocolate candy that had been strewn alongside the highway when the truck flipped over.

Following the truck rollover accident, Alvarez was transported to Waterbury Hospital where he was treated for minor head cuts, state police said.

State police issued Alvarez an infraction ticket on a charge of failure to drive in the established lane. That motor vehicle violation bears a $127 fine. It is appealable in court.

On May 4, a Kentucky tractor-trailer truck driver who was hauling a load of metal shavings got into a rollover accident on the same section of eastbound I-84 near Exit 14, resulting in traffic backups that extended for miles, causing in traffic delays all day long.

That trucker lost control of the vehicle and it drifted to the right side of the road, flipping over onto its side and scattering its load of metal shavings. That metal spillage required an extensive cleanup project.

Governor M. Jodi Rell on Monday ordered the state police and the state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to conduct a trucking enforcement crackdown, in light of a rash of major trucking accidents that have occurred in the state during the past several months. (See related story)