SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 2, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — Westbound Interstate 80 remained closed for more than six hours after a truck fire blocked an area just east of Parleys Canyon.
Agencies, including Unified Fire, responded and doused the flames, but the roadway remained closed. Much of the holdup in getting the scene cleared has involved emptying the burned out trailer of its full load of frozen food products.
“It was a fully loaded semi trailer,” Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Cameron Roden told Gephardt Daily at about 5:30 p.m. Monday. “It sounds like it was hash browns or some other kind of frozen food.”
“That’s what’s just taking all that time, trying to get that offloaded and get it to where they can get that trailer removed.”
The boxes visible in the Unified Fire photos say at least some of the the formerly frozen product is rasmalai, which Wikipedia says is an Indian dessert made of flattened balls of chhena, a type of cheese, soaked in malai, a type of clotted cream, and flavored with cardamom, then stuffed with a filling including saffron, pistachios and kheer, a sweetened pudding made of rice.
As for the interstate blockage, Roden said the last estimate he heard was the road could be cleared by 6 p.m. or so, which it was.
The incident began at about 11:15 a.m., near mile marker 128, when “the driver noticed he had some issues,” Roden said. “He stopped, and noticed that his rear axle was on fire, and so he was able to disconnect the truck portion and remove it, and the rear part of the trailer caught on fire.
“Once troopers arrived, they closed down westbound I-80. Cars were able to take that I-215 (east) interchange and actually get right back on I-80, past the trailer, because there’s a ramp right there.”
Although the incident caused major inconveniences and backups for drivers, Roden said the good news is that no one was injured, including the semi’s driver.
