On Saturday, June 27, 2009, a truck carrying prefabricated walls to an Extreme Makeover house in Erie, PA flipped, spilling concrete and prefabricated wall panels for the new home.

In addition to the cleanup of the walls, the contractor had to rush to get new panels for the house, which must be completed by Thursday, July 2.

The road was closed while they clean up the walls.

Presumably, the spill will be featured on the Extreme Makeover Home Edition show.

Erie Times

On July 30, 2009 a semi truck overturned in Pratt, Kansas, killing 500-600 piglets on their way to Iowa and injuring the driver. The truck was carrying 2,350 piglets total.

The driver made a turn, and his load shifted, causing the truck to flip over onto the passenger side. The driver was wearing a seat belt and was hospitalized.

For the next several hours the road was closed and pigs were screaming as they were rescued. Local farmers brought empty trialers to transfer the pigs into. Workers purchased some wire fencing to make pens for the pigs and holes were cut in the top of the trailer to help get them out.

Once the top half of the rig was empty, they were able to get the truck back upright and they could unload the rest of the piglets from the side and back doors of the trailer.

Some of the more badly injured pigs were euthanized. Once all the live pigs were removed and transported, volunteers removed hundreds of dead pigs from the trailer. They were taken to be “buried” in the Pratt County Landfill. Special permission was needed from the Kansas Dept. of Health & Environment.

The Pratt Tribune Photos Gale Rose

On February 5, 2010, in Modesto, CA, a truck carrying tomato paste lost it’s load on the northbound lane of Mitchell Road near the Modesto Aiport. Ups to six inches of tomato paste covered the road.

Crews used shovels to remove most of the mess and a street sweeper cleaned up the rest.

The flatbed truck that was responsible was later pulled over by the Highway Patrol.

Via Modesto Bee

Pig Food

It’s rare that we get live footage of a truck spill in action. Even rarer when it’s this disgusting. Rarer still when it’s this funny.

Justin Rowlatt, known as The Ethical Man, flew to Las Vegas to see how a pig farm feeds their pigs with leftovers from the city’s restaurants.

Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to him to be a bit more careful when he stopped his truck full of slop just as he reached the cameraman.

He was wearing a nice suit too! (Why?)

Ecological Disaster! Ethical Man Gets Covered… by KareenMekhi
 

BBC

On February 15, 2010, in Windsor, Canada, a tractor-trailer side-swiped a minivan, causing the truck to go out of control and overturn.

The top of the overturned truck tore open and spilled approximately 40,000 auto parts through a chain-link fence and into a bridge plaza property close to customs offices.

The minivan’s occupants, a family of four from London on their way to Florida, suffered only minor injuries. The truck driver had to be freed from the truck and was treated and released.

It took almost 8 hours to remove all the auto parts.

Windsor Star

Lottery Tickets

On Thursday, March 11, 2010, a tractor-trailer spilled about 3.5 million scratch-off lottery tickets worth about $70 million on I-75 in Florida.

Some sort of mechanical malfunction with the truck’s rear axle caused a fire under the truck. The driver pulled over, released the trailer and pulled the cab forward. He then used a fire extinguisher on the truck fire, which entered the trailer, burning some of the tickets. More tickets were damaged by water from Marion County Fire Rescue, who arrived at the scene and helped with the blaze.

The lottery tickets, some burned, some wet, were scattered on the highway.

Florida lottery officials almost immediately cancelled the tickets so they could not be redeemed.

via ABC

Thar She Blows! (OK, that was too easy).

A 56-foot, 60-ton sperm whale died on a beach in Taiwan in January, 2004. Researchers wanted the carcass to perform an autopsy and for research, so they loaded the whale onto a tractor-trailer and set out through the city of Tainan, heading for the Shi-Tsau Natural Preserve. It took 13 hours, three cranes and 50 workers to get the whale loaded on the truck. Unfortunately, on the way through the city, gasses built up to a critical level in the whale and it exploded, spewing whale guts in the street, on the cars and over pedestrians. According to witnesses, the smell was pretty bad. Residents and shop owners put on masks and tried to clean up the mess. Eventually the whale continued its journey to the research center.

When I sent this picture to my friend, Richard, he said “…I initially thought a motorcyclist had exploded. But then I noticed the subtle background-whale”

Re: MSNBC and others