What was all that glass on major highway in Charlotte? About the shutdown
Anything can happen when driving along Charlotte’s sometimes open, sometimes jammed highways.
But drivers in south Charlotte were presented a new obstacle Thursday morning: glass shards covering three lanes of a highway, shutting it down.
A tractor-trailer carrying a covered load of mirror glass sheets took the Interstate 485 exit to Interstate 77 south at 10 a.m., but maneuvered to avoid a crash and lost most its cargo, said Aaron Moody, the assistance communications director at the N.C. Department of Transportation.
Most of the cargo was lost on the roadway not far from the South Carolina border. The department’s Incident Management Assistance Patrol responded and found vehicles driving on the shoulder to avoid driving over the glass shards, Moody said.
“Due to nightly rain events the shoulder was saturated, and a large truck ended up stuck in the shoulder so the traffic was stopped until IMAP could clear one lane of most of the material to release traffic,” he said.
Crews cleared a second lane shortly after. The third lane, which contained most of the glass, remained closed until Interstate Maintenance staff arrived with a sweepers and blowers at 11:45 a.m., Moody said.
“Traffic was stopped a second time to start more aggressively cleaning the glass, one lane at a time, releasing traffic as available,” Moody said. “The roadway fully reopened about 1 p.m. after all lanes were cleared and blown off.”
