Is This Any Way to Start a Week?

A sewage-laden tanker tipped onto a pickup truck Monday, triggering a massive traffic jam that tied up as many as 100,000 commuters during the morning rush hour and left many fuming over life on Southern California’s freeways.

The 8-ton truck was northbound on the San Diego Freeway north of Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa at about 7:30 a.m. when the driver failed to negotiate a lane change and overturned, striking the pickup. Both drivers were taken to Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center with minor injuries.

No one was cited, although evidence suggests the truck made an unsafe lane change and was going too fast, said California Highway Patrol Officer Mike Lundquist.

The incident snarled traffic in both directions as southbound motorists slowed to take a look. It also had a ripple effect on nearby freeways, backing traffic up on the Corona del Mar Freeway to the south and the San Gabriel River freeway connection to the north, officials said.

Only one lane was open until about 11 a.m. Some motorists were delayed more than an hour, and some said they spent that time rethinking their decisions to live in Southern California.

Take Laurie Merrick of Garden Grove. The accident more than doubled the travel time for the 33-year-old computer analyst, turning her 20-minute commute into an hourlong ordeal. As she sat in her car going nowhere, she thought about how she had quit her last job because she couldn’t stand the difficult commute.

“Nowhere else in America does it take this long to get to work,” Merrick said. “A well-placed accident brings the whole freeway system to its knees.”

Many of Merrick’s colleagues at Canon in Costa Mesa were also affected by the accident, arriving more than an hour late for work. But supervisors there are familiar with calls from workers who find themselves stuck on local freeways.

“The bosses are used to it,” she said. “You can just call in; they know what it’s like,” she said.

Vickie Henderson of Yorba Linda, one of Merrick’s co-workers, said that when she’s stuck in traffic, she has plenty of ways to keep herself occupied, including looking around at what other people are doing.

“People bring books and newspapers, reading them as they drive, bumper to bumper,” she said. “Usually, I get most of my voice mail done or I do my nails. It’s part of Southern California living.”

But some might say Merrick and Henderson--who was also caught in traffic--were among the luckier ones.

Motorists and businesses closest to the overturned truck had to deal with the overpowering odor that filled the air as workers sucked out much of the 1,600 gallons of sewage the truck was carrying--a process that was needed before the truck could be righted.

The cleanup lasted more than four hours, in part because workers forgot to close an equipment valve, which led to the truck’s spilling the rest of its load as the rig was set upright.

The spill was contained, and it is not believed that any got into storm drains, said Capt. Thomas Clevenger of the Costa Mesa Fire Department. County health officials directed a Caltrans crew to steam-clean the area using what is essentially a huge vacuum cleaner, and a bleach solution was used to disinfect the freeway. A private company disposed of the sewage, Clevenger said.

Although the traffic jam was a headache for many, some businesses benefited from it all.

Many motorists pulled into the Mobil gas station at Gisler Avenue and Harbor Boulevard.

“We had many customers from the freeway. Almost all were complaining about being late,” said gas station attendant Orolia Perez. “Some of them said they were an hour and a half late. . . . I could see all the paramedics, firefighters and the helicopters.”