Massive delays during the morning rush hour ruffled some feathers for commuters after a truck overturned and spilled its load of chicken feathers on the interstate in Federal Way, Washington.
The crash happened at 3:20 a.m. in the northbound lanes of I-5 at S. 320th.
The truck driver, who was hauling 40,000 pounds of chicken feathers to Mount Vernon, told news station King5 that he fell asleep at the wheel, crashing into a guardrail and then overcorrecting, causing his truck to overturn.
That’s a ton of chicken feathers! Still covering 3 lanes of I-5 in Federal Way! Smells BAD!! Attracting flies!! Updates live right now on #komonews pic.twitter.com/Nq6nqk2c1q
— Theron Zahn (@TheronZahnKOMO) May 23, 2018
The truck driver wasn’t seriously injured in the crash. He said that it was his first crash in 27 years.
All lanes of northbound I-5 were closed for hours while crews worked to clean up the mess of feathers. Though all lanes except for the HOV lane were reopened by 7 a.m., backups of seven miles were reported.
Off to a ROUGH start coming northbound I-5 out of @wsdot_tacoma area. 7 mile backup now due to this semi rollover that is blocking the 3 left lanes at S. 320th. #LeaveEarly pic.twitter.com/kdbUE7KXIa
— WSDOT Traffic (@wsdot_traffic) May 23, 2018
WSDOT shared a post on Twitter putting the massive feather spill in perspective.
One of our traffic engineers did the 🐔math – 40,000 lbs of chicken feathers = ~18 million feathers (they still weigh the same as 40,000 lbs of bricks, however). With ~ 8,000 feathers on a chicken that’s almost 2,300 chickens worth of feathers. pic.twitter.com/ukd29bkWKG
— WSDOT Traffic (@wsdot_traffic) May 23, 2018