A truck loaded with fish totes rolled over on Egan Drive in Juneau on Monday afternoon, spilling thousands of pounds of chum salmon onto the highway and blocking inbound traffic for almost three hours.
“It was a medium-duty commercial truck. It was carrying a load of salmon,” Juneau Police Department Lt. David Campbell said by phone Monday.
JPD got a report of the single vehicle rollover near the intersection of Egan Drive and Highland Drive close to Juneau-Douglas High School around 3:22 p.m. The truck was headed inbound toward town. JPD officers were on scene within three minutes, Campbell said.
“One person was in the truck — the driver. He was out of the truck and standing when we arrived,” he said.
The driver was transported by ambulance to Bartlett Regional Hospital.
A JPD Facebook post by Chief Bryce Johnson, who was on scene, said about 10,000 pounds of chum salmon were blocking the highway.
KTOO production manager Mikko Wilson, who was also on scene, tweeted out a higher figure of 16,000 pounds.
Campbell said both the driver and the truck were from out of state.
“I heard fish was headed downtown to one of the processors. I don’t want to name a processor at this time,” he said.
Photos of the accident show people in bibs, rubber gloves and hair protection throwing the spilled fish back into totes marked “Icy Strait.” Icy Strait Seafoods processes its fish at Taku Fisheries located downtown.
Representatives from Taku Fisheries and Icy Strait could not be reached by press time.
A tow truck arrived around 5:15 p.m., according to JPD.
After Capital City Fire/Rescue hosed down the area, inbound traffic on Egan, which had been closed since the incident, reopened around 6 p.m.
