The main highway through Colorado Springs turned into a slip-and-slide slow ride for more than nine hours Sunday after a semi truck hauling steel broke down and spewed hydraulic fluid.
“We can’t open up the highway because it’s so slippery,” Colorado Springs Police Sgt. Mary Walsh said Sunday night.
The police closed northbound Interstate 25 shortly after the truck and its trailer separated around 12:30 p.m., backing up traffic for miles toward the center of Colorado Springs.
By 3 p.m., police had opened a median to let vehicles squeeze slowly through.
Nine hours after the spill, police still couldn’t open the three-lane highway. Environmental cleanup contractors were working into the night spraying a greenish blue foam, scouring the highway with brushes, blasting with hoses and sucking up residues using vacuums.
The fluid spilled out of the tanker across 200 meters — longer than two soccer fields — near the Fontanero Street exit, Sgt. Michael Inazu said at the scene.
“This stuff doesn’t dry out. I’ve been out almost seven hours. None of it has evaporated. It is really slippery. It is some kind of hydraulic stuff,” Inazu said.
“They spray foam cleaner. Then they hit it with, like, a power washer. And they also scrub it with a broom. And then they have got a vacuum,” he said.
“It smells like oil.”
Fountain Creek flows near I-25. Police said they were uncertain what was in the fluid and whether any reached the creek. They said that was unlikely because there was no heavy rain.
Hydraulic fluids used in auto transmissions and other machinery contain many chemicals. Some float and some can sink into groundwater. Federal authorities say contact with the fluids can irritate skin or eyes.
