Fat-Clogged Traffic Arteries - Chicken Fat On Virginia's Eastern Shore

Renegade chicken fat clogged a major traffic artery, Route 13, in Accomack County, Virginia on Tuesday, November 27, 2007, leaving a noxious trail of slippery goo. Knowing that the part that goes over the fence last could never leave a trail that big, officials went looking for a human perpetrator. The culprit, was a tanker truck hauling hazmat of chicken fat to Maryland. The truck had left a Perdue Farms plant with its valve open and the chicken fat leaked onto U.S. 13 for over 20 miles from the Virginia plant all the way to the Maryland State line.

VDOT spread 44 truck loads of sand on Route 13 to suck up the fat. Cars were sliding all over the northbound lanes and people were dropping like flies from the stench.

Virginia State Police Sgt. Joe Bunting said “there were at least four crashes and several spinouts reported between 5 and 6 a.m. on northbound U.S. 13, the primary road through the Eastern Shore. One person injured in one of the crashes was taken to a local hospital,” he said. “The liquefied fat was sticking to the tires of cars that were spreading it onto secondary roads in the region.” He added that “drivers who got the grease on their vehicle tires would smell a ‘really funky’ odor.”

The tanker driver, who was pulled over at the weigh station near the Maryland State line will be charged.