Oil, Tar Spills Tie Up Traffic on 2 Freeways
Separate spills of oil and hot roofing tar closed two Los Angeles-area freeways during the afternoon rush hour Wednesday, bringing miles of already overheated motorists to a standstill.
All four lanes of the southbound Long Beach Freeway were blocked at 5:27 p.m. when a truck loaded with two tons of bubbling tar overturned just south of the transition road from the westbound San Bernardino Freeway.
Monterey Park Fire Department Battalion Chief Allen McComb said the truck collided with a pickup truck, but neither driver was injured.
Firefighters built a small dike around the freeway-wide pool of tar to keep it from spreading further, then state Department of Transportation crews moved in with graders and other equipment to scrape it up and haul it away.
The freeway lanes and the transition road were still closed late Wednesday night.
Just about an hour earlier, four gallons of oil used in concrete forming fell off a truck on the northbound San Diego Freeway at Hawthorne Boulevard in Lawndale, turning the northbound lanes into a treacherous slide and closing it for 2 1/2 hours.
With South Bay Curve traffic backed up for miles, Caltrans used two truckloads of sand to make the lanes passable again.
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