This early morning wreck occured on the lower deck of I-93 southbound in Boston, on that 100 yard stretch known locally as the "high bridge". This section is directly above the Charles River and the Gridley Locks.

As you can see, he spilled his entire load of bundled wood shingles. In addition to blocking two of the three lanes, he also spilled much of the load over the guardrail, into the river. As depicted by the bottom photo, you can see that the accident not only messed up auto traffic, it messed up boat travel through the locks as well!

What makes this accident even more interesting, is the fact that it was almost a perfect repeat performance of another accident 3 years ago, involving another Canadian lumber trucker. The impact of that accident went down in the history books as the worst non-weather related traffic jam since 1973, when a truck hit the Tobin bridge.

On May 2nd of 1995, Serge Brosseau was hauling a load of 2x4's (while intoxicated) when he swerved and tipped his trailer into one of the bridge support beams and bending it. In addition to dumping his load onto the road and into the river, it forced a complete closure of I-93 in both directions until bridge repairs were completed, 2 days later! The cost of that whole fiasco was about $1M with the police overtime, not including commercial loss to businesses.

The trucker in this newest accident hit the EXACT SAME BEAM! Thankfully, this time there wasn't any structural damage to the bridge, and the cleanup was almost completed by the start of morning rush-hour. But it sure brought back some scary memories ;-)

I was on the scene before the police arrived and got to speak with the driver. He was one lucky SOB because he walked away without a scratch! He didn't appear to be drunk, I personally think he fell asleep at the wheel. After I found out he was OK, I told him to dig out his paperwork and prepare for a major ass reaming from the State Police Truck Team..................

I'll bet he went back to Canada bow-legged.....