Don’t panic, that pile of pink slime is not The Thing or The Blob – but it is enough to make a hot dog lover (or a vegetarian) weep: more than 6,800 kilos of hot dog filler spilled all over a Pennsylvania highway.
When a semi-trailer’s brakes failed at high speed on Interstate 70 in Westmoreland County late last month, the truck lost control, careening off the highway and into trees – and what happened next can best be relayed by the Pennsylvania State Police:
“Due to the violent stopping motion… the load contained inside the trailer of (the truck) became dislodged causing approximately 15,000 pounds of hot dog filler to catapult onto the roadway,” a police press release said.
While the driver and passenger sustained only minor injuries, the same cannot be said for traffic along I-70: the hot dog goop forced the closure of all but one westbound lane for almost four hours before it was finally cleared at 10:30pm.
Investigators found that several of the truck’s brakes were “completely inoperable, resulting in a total loss of stopping power”; the driver, meanwhile, is facing “numerous citations”, and presumably a lot of unhappy hot dog enthusiasts went hungry.
Clearly, then, there were only losers in this scenario – no wieners at all.
