PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A tractor trailer crash led to a soapy mess during Tuesday's morning rush hour, including the closure of a section of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo says a tractor trailer going east hit an overpass between Downingtown and Valley Forge around 3 a.m.
"Scattering these gallon jugs of dish soap all over the Eastbound and Westbound lanes of the Pennsylvania Turnpike," DeFebo said, "creating quite a mess."
So, what do you do when there's soap all over the road? DeFebo says they could have tried to blast water to clear it off, because the soap was environmentally safe. But that would lead to very slick conditions. So, crews used a material called Petrosorb.
"Which is a sandlike substance," DeFebo said. "They spread it over the dish liquid, and basically created a slimy, kind of sandy, clumpy substance that our crews were then able to clean up with a street sweeper."
After that, DeFebo says, they had trucks dump a lot of salt and sand on the area. The closure on the turnpike ended after about five hours.
