Coca-Cola Spill Closes Freeway For 9 Hours

It was ... a sticky situation. On Saturday morning, a semi truck carrying thousands of Coca-Cola products was involved in a collision on Interstate 10 in Pomona, California, CBS2 Los Angeles reports. The impact caused the vehicle to tip over with its cargo, which spilled on the highway, and its driver was trapped in the cabin. Fortunately, respondents managed to rescue the driver, who reportedly suffered minor injuries. The person who collided with the truck was reportedly uninjured as well.

However, the road surface was covered with Dr. Pepper and other soft drinks for hours, CBS2 Los Angeles also reports. The mess was so bad that authorities had to narrow the freeway from 10 lanes to two, which backed traffic up by at least an hour. To get a real sense of the scale, though, one should look at the time frame of the incident and the clean up. The collision occurred just before 6 a.m., KNX News reports, and the freeway only resumed full capacity at 1:50 p.m. 

Luckily, the crash was a relatively minor nuisance to commuters and the Coca-Cola company, in addition to minor physical injuries to the driver. However, if a greater quantity of soda spilled or the cleanup had been more time-consuming, the ordeal could have been much more of a problem.

Such a situation happened in El Paso, Texas in 2019. One evening, a neighborhood flooded with thousands of gallons of Coke from the local facility, KFOX14 reported. The syrup acted like a tar, blocking roads and forcing nearby authorities to close several blocks, and even trapping a bird. Soda sludge also seeped into driveways and yards, according to KOAA. Some believe the spill, which was reportedly "several inches deep," came from a drainage system. Cleanup crews mixed dirt in the soda in an effort to ease its removal.

Coca-Cola did not immediately comment on the spill at the time.