Mail Truck Catches Fire After Hitting Boulder

Postal workers sorted through thousands of pounds of mail Thursday, much of it wet as a result of an early morning mail truck accident and fire on the Antelope Valley Freeway.

The driver of a southbound big rig carrying a trailer full of mail lost control after hitting a boulder on the freeway north of Agua Dulce Canyon Road, crashed through the center divider and caught fire, U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Terri Bouffiou said.

Both of the truck’s gas tanks erupted in flames when the vehicle hit the median, she said.

The accident closed all northbound lanes of the freeway for two hours and all southbound lanes for an hour, the California Highway Patrol said. It took workers nearly six hours to complete the cleanup, with all lanes reopening by 8 a.m.

The driver, Victor Serpas, 36, of South Gate, sustained minor injuries and was treated at the scene by paramedics. No other vehicles were involved.

The mail truck was traveling from the Mojave Processing Center to Los Angeles International Airport with mail headed out of state or overseas, Bouffiou said. All the mail was posted Wednesday from ZIP Codes beginning with 935, which includes the communities of Palmdale, Lancaster, Mojave and Acton.

About 70% of the mail was burned and the rest was damaged by water used to extinguish the blaze, Bouffiou said.

The damaged mail was taken to the Santa Clarita Processing and Distribution Center. There thousands of pieces of the wet mail will be dried, which could take a day or two, Bouffiou said. Each piece of mail will then placed in a plastic bag and marked as damaged.

The mail with legible addresses will be delivered or returned to the sender, she said.

If addresses can’t be read, the mail will be sent to the Mail Recovery Center in San Francisco--once known as the Dead Letter Office--where postal workers attempt to find the sender or the recipient.

If the mail hasn’t been returned or hasn’t reached its destination after a week, senders should assume it was lost, Bouffiou said.

Residents who lose important mail, such as credit card payments, may ask local postmasters for letters explaining the fire and lost mail, Bouffiou said.

This was the second accident this month involving a fire on a truck carrying mail. On Jan. 3, a big rig carrying mail to Sylmar crashed into a crane truck on the Golden State Freeway on the Newhall Pass, and about 9,000 pieces of mail were burned.