Rollover spills Thanksgiving dinner on Interstate 90

WALLACE – A Montana woman driving a semitruck apparently fell asleep at the wheel. The resulting rollover spilled 84,000 pounds of frozen foods that – except for a lack of gravy – transformed Interstate 90 near Wallace into a TV dinner Wednesday morning, the Idaho State Police reported.

Linda R. Pratt, 60, of Bozeman, was driving east through the Silver Valley in a 2001 Freightliner when she fell asleep, ISP said. According to the ISP, the truck entered a curve, hit the concrete jersey barriers at the median and rolled onto its side, blocking both eastbound and one westbound lane.

“There was frozen turkey, frozen peas, yogurt. It was all over the freeway,” Shoshone County Sheriff Chuck Reynalds said Wednesday afternoon. The highway at the Silverton interchange looked like a Thanksgiving meal, Reynalds said. Traffic was diverted around the wreck via the on- and off-ramps at Silverton, ISP said.

“The sheriff is looking into the phenomenon of what is causing truck drivers to fall asleep at the Silverton interchange,” Reynalds said. “This is the second one in eight days. It’s freaky: Two experienced drivers fall asleep at the same interchange, both tip over and block the entire freeway.” One truck spilled french fries, the other spilled dinner.

“There is a psychological phenomenon here” that could be worthy of an episode of “Unexplained Mysteries,” the sheriff said. The driver was unhurt, Reynalds said.