Morning commute on 405 stinks

Jessica Garrison

COSTA MESA -- A sewage tanker flipped over on the San Diego

Freeway, closing four of the five northbound lanes at Harbor Boulevard

and fouling the Monday morning commute for an estimated 100,000 drivers.

“Anytime you have an entire freeway shut down for almost four hours,

it’s a major, major problem,” said Officer Mike Lundquist of the

California Highway Patrol.

About 7:30, a fully loaded sewage tanker, driven by Allen Horton of

Gardena, swerved and then flipped over, colliding with a truck driven by

George Forhsay of Rancho Santa Margarita.

Horton sustained minor injuries and was taken to Fountain Valley

Hospital

Horton’s downed truck, which was filled with 1,600 gallons of sewage,

blocked all but one lane of the northbound freeway until just before

noon.

To avoid spilling all that sewage, highway officials had to bring a

pumper truck onto the freeway to unload the tanker before righting it.

During the more than three hours the process took, the entire

northbound side of the freeway, except the slow lane, was closed.

Radio personalities on both AM and FM clucked and joked and warned

drivers to avoid the 405 at all costs, but many drivers were unable to

heed the warning, and traffic backed up for miles.

“We’re talking hundreds of thousands of lost work hours,” Lundquist

said. “Take a person stuck in traffic for an extra hour, and multiply

that by 100,000 and think about what the average person makes in an

hour.”

In addition to financial losses, Lundquist said, officers also braced

themselves to handle other casualties of a closed freeway: increased road

rage and other aggressive driving from commuters whose patience was

stretched to the limit.

Officers also had their patience tested. When they went to right the

tanker at about 10:30, a valve opened and started spilling sewage onto

the one open lane of the freeway.

So officers opened the carpool lanes and shut down the slow lane in

order to clean up that sewage.

All lanes of the freeway were reopened at 11:48 a.m.