A truck carrying squid overturned in Narragansett, Rhode Island, on Sunday, spilling hundreds of the seafood across a road and keeping the crossing closed until late in the day. Police arrived at 9:27 in the morning, and the road did not reopen until 5:15 in the afternoon.
The driver and one passenger in the cab were not hurt, and no other vehicles were involved. But the wreck left more than a traffic problem. Crews needed heavy machinery and a dump truck to clear the squid from the pavement after the trailer detached in a curve and landed on its side.
That is the kind of spill that turns a routine cleanup into a long one. Richard Stevens said squid has a distinctive smell and can stink badly when it falls on the road and sits there for a while. In this case, the odor grew stronger because the squid stayed in the sun for several hours on a warm summer day.
The truck had been headed to a processing plant outside town when the trailer came loose, separated from the vehicle and tipped over. The reason that happened has not been made public. The Rhode Island State Police Commercial Enforcement Unit is investigating, but no citation has been announced. Ryan Prest said, “No hemos emitido ninguna multa,” and added, “No estoy seguro de si la policía estatal emitirá alguna multa.”
The Narragansett Police Department later joked about the scene in a Wednesday social media post, calling it the “Calamarocalípsis del 26.” The joke fit the scale of the cleanup, but it did not change the basic fact at the center of the day: a truck rolled, squid covered the road, and a summer curve in Narragansett stayed shut for hours before crews could clear it.
