No Charges in Giant Traffic Jam From Spill

No criminal charges will be filed against the driver or the company responsible for a chemical spill that shut down the southbound lanes of Interstate 5 near Del Mar for about seven hours last week, a California Highway Patrol spokesman said Thursday.

CHP Officer Lloyd Needham identified the company as Squires Belt Material Co., a San Diego building materials distribution firm. While no criminal charges will be filed against the company or the unidentified driver who dropped a 50-pound bag of iron oxide on the freeway, a Caltrans lawyer said the firm will probably receive a cleaning bill.

“There are no plans to file charges against the company and driver. We don’t believe they knew it fell off,” Needham said. “None of the witnesses could positively identify the driver. We believe that he did not leave the scene intentionally.”

Witnesses Saw Plate

Needham said that CHP officials traced the bag to Squires Belt with the help of witnesses who gave investigators the truck’s identification number and license plate number.

Caltrans attorney Robert Meyer said the cleanup costs have not been tabulated but added that “it’s pretty routine procedure” to bill the company or individuals responsible for a freeway spill.

“If a truck dumps a load and it costs us money to clean it up, we bill them . . . When we find out who’s responsible we send them a bill and if they don’t pay we’ll sue them,” Meyer said.

Caltrans contracted with IT Corp. to clean up the spill.

The freeway lanes were closed from 4 to 11:15 p.m., creating what officials called the worst gridlock in San Diego freeway history, while workers vacuumed the small mounds of yellow dust that lay scattered on the concrete. Officials do not know how many cars were stuck in the seven-hour traffic jam, but the Automobile Club of Southern California estimated that 167,000 automobiles travel the stretch of highway between Carmel Valley Road and Del Mar Heights Road every day.

Although the accident occurred last Friday, CHP officials said Thursday they were still receiving complaints about the road closure from disgruntled motorists who were stuck in the monumental traffic jam.

“Incidents like this are common in Los Angeles. It’s one of the prices you pay for being a big city,” Needham said. “You think we choked off the city’s jugular vein. I must have taken hundreds of calls from people who were caught in the gridlock. All we can do is go by the book. If you start second-guessing the guy who wrote the book you might end up hurting someone.”

Needham was referring to a guidebook used by CHP and Caltrans officials that describes the properties of dozens of chemicals that might end up getting spilled on California highways.

“We had scientific experts who said the stuff (iron oxide) was bad,” Needham said. “The book said that iron oxide was bad. . . . It’s an eye irritant and we couldn’t let it get into a dust cloud because then you have respiratory problems. . . . We consulted experts from the Caltrans and San Diego Fire Department’s hazardous materials unit. Everyone agreed that the stuff was enough of a hazard, so we shut her down.”

However, John Benson, vice president of Squires Belt Material Co., said the iron oxide did not present a danger to motorists. Benson declined to say if the CHP and Caltrans overreacted by closing the freeway but he commented that “they didn’t have to send all those guys in spacesuits” to do the cleanup.

According to Benson, the iron oxide was manufactured by Pfizer Pigments and contains “no hazardous ingredients.” He said that a data sheet issued by the manufacturer said that the product was stable, non-flammable and could be washed off with soap and water.