Truck Carrying Acid Overturns Shutting Down North Carolina Highway

April 5, 2012

Both directions of Interstate 26 in western North Carolina are closed after a truck carrying sulfuric acid overturned in Henderson County.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation said Wednesday it has set up detours around the crash site just outside of East Flat Rock. The agency says the tractor-trailer overturned on the highway late Tuesday and caught fire.

Henderson County Emergency Management official Rocky Hyder says an evacuation order has been reversed for about 100 people in 50 homes within a mile of the crash. Hyder says a fire in the truck’s cab and a smaller blaze of the acid is extinguished, and clean-up is under way.

Hyder says the truck driver was taken to a hospital.