Sweet, Sticky Irony

It is so sad that all of this natural sweetener was wasted. I bet the artificial sweetener people are behind it. Or perhaps the HFCS companies caused it. Seriously, I'm glad that no one was critically injured.

To see a picture of a highway covered in one of my favorite natural sweeteners, go here:

http://blog.oregonlive.com/commuting/2008/12/when_the_commute_really_turns.html

Am I the only one who would have tried to scoop up the runaway molasses, for goodness' sake? Molasses makes the best gingersnaps! And the dark, unsulphured kind can be really expensive! I would have happily picked out the sage brush and tumbleweeds.

When the commute really turns to molasses in Harney County

Posted by jrose December 05, 2008 09:47AM

Molasses on 395 shuts down traffic for three hours.

Here at the Hard Drive blog, we often quip in our traffic updates about how Portland area traffic has turned to "molasses" during the peak commuting hours.

Little did we know that there would be a day when that simile would become reality. Thursday, it happened in rural Harney County. Well, sort of.

Two people suffered minor injuries and Oregon 395 was closed for three hours after a truck crashed, spilling ... wait for it ... molasses all over the highway.

About 2:45 p.m., the driver of the rig, which was pulling two tanker trailers loaded with molasses southbound on 395 between Riley and Wagontire, swerved to avoid a herd of deer crossing the road and crashed. Both trailers and the big truck rolled over, spilling hundreds of gallons of the thick, sticky stuff. The molasses crept into ditches on both sides of the highway.

The driver, Julio Cesar Gil-Juarez, 22, of Twin Falls, Id., walked away. But the highway backup caused a second wreck, injuring a Twin Falls couple, police said.

As for the molasses, it's non-hazardous and caused very little environmental impact, officials said. Less than five gallons of diesel fuel also leaked from the truck's fuel tanks. Police cited Gil-Juarez for careless driving.

So, there you go: Proof that it's not always easygoing on the roads in eastern Oregon. Still, we'd take a molasses spill over this morning's nightmarish mess on U.S. 26 any morning.

-- Joseph Rose; josephrose@news.oregonian.com