‘Like a horror film’: Tomato puree spillage leaves road looking like disaster zone

Jackknifed lorry carrying tonnes of food covers English dual carriageway in tomatoes

‘Horror movie’: the tomato puree spillage. Photograph: Highways England/PA Wire
‘Horror movie’: the tomato puree spillage. Photograph: Highways England/PA Wire

A 37km stretch of road in England was left looking like a scene from a "horror film" after a lorry crash spilled tomato puree across the tarmac.

The westbound carriageway of the A14 from Cambridge to Brampton was closed after the collision between two lorries on Tuesday. Cambridgeshire police tweeted that what “looked like the set of a horror film was actually thousands of squashed tomatoes. The incident ... involved two jack-knifed lorries, including one carrying tons of olive oil and tomatoes.”

One driver was injured, although not seriously. BBC News reported the driver had been discharged from hospital.

Several people made light of the spill, with one tweeting: “I went pasta that. Took a while for the traffic to ketchup.”

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Another joked: “And I imagine when it does reopen cars will have to passata slow speed?” Others said it was fortunate that the crash didn’t take place at Spaghetti Junction.

Jackknifed: the lorry was carrying tonnes of tomatoes and olive oil. Photograph: Highways England/PA Wire
Jackknifed: the lorry was carrying tonnes of tomatoes and olive oil. Photograph: Highways England/PA Wire

It is far from the first unusual road spill to make headlines. In Germany in 2018, about two dozen firefighters had to use shovels to scrape a tonne of chocolate off a road after it spilled out of a storage tank and hardened on contact with the cold surface.

In the US state of Oregon the year before, several cars were “slimed” after 3,400kg of hagfish spilled on to the road when a truck overturned. – Guardian