Melted chocolate is delicious. So delicious, in fact, that someone actually went to the trouble of creating a chocolate fondue fountain. And honestly, the fact that they’ve gone out of style lately is a shame. Oh, you don’t want a chocolate fountain at your wedding reception because it’s “not classy” and “people’s hands are all covered in germs”? Who cares? The best way to celebrate your love is with a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries in hand. That said, maybe a highway isn’t the best way to recreate the experience.
KCRA reports that on Monday, a semi-truck in Placer County, California caught on fire while carrying 40,000 pounds of chocolate, creating “a melty mess and traffic delays.” According to Cal Fire, the fire started as the truck was traveling westbound on Interstate 80 at about 4:15 a.m. Apparently, the truck’s brakes caught on fire, leading the driver to disconnect the trailer and pull off on the side of the road. While the driver is safe and uninjured, the trailer itself was completely destroyed.
With the trailer burned to a crisp, the chocolate it was carrying spilled out into the road, and even hours later when news crews arrived, there were still giant piles of chocolate on the side of the road, just melting away in the sun. All lanes have since been reopened, but as you can imagine, cleaning up such a sweet mess resulted in some gnarly traffic delays.
Nick Anderson, an employee of Five Star Towing and Transport, the company in charge of removing the burned-out trailer from the side of the road, told KCRA that speed and riding the brakes likely caused the fire and that this is far from the first time he’s responded to similar situations on that same stretch of highway. “We’ve had worse,” Anderson told KCRA. “We’ve had cheese curd trailers. We’ve had dog food trailers. We’ve had cardboard trailers on fire.”
