Hundreds of nails spilled on I-10 in Metairie yesterday. Drivers said it looked “like glitter across the roadway.” https://t.co/P5mO4WHKA4 pic.twitter.com/0y6vGkFdu7
— Carlie Kollath Wells (@carlie_kollath) September 27, 2017
It’s the stuff of cartoons. A truck lost its load of roofing nails on Interstate 10 in New Orleans this week, causing plenty of tire punctures.
Witnesses said the nails in the eastbound lanes looked like glitter or confetti under the noon-day sun. Some continued driving not realizing that the ‘glitter’ was actually a huge mess of nails.
“It honestly looked like confetti,” Barbara Bagwell told nola.com. “It looked like someone opened a window and threw out confetti.”
After news broke that a truck had spilled nails on the highway, Bagwell checked her tires and found nails in two of them.
Local tire shops enjoyed a flurry of business as customers rolled in Tuesday to have the nails removed. Southern Tire reported that one customer alone had to have 24 nails pulled.
State police said that motorists reached out to them for information on the truck driver and his company so that they could get reimbursed for repairs. However, police refused. Instead they advised that they turn to their insurance companies instead.
Unlike a vehicle accident, the nails were declared debris, so motorists were advised to save receipts from repairs, take pictures of any damages and file a claim with their insurance provider.
The spill shut down three eastbound I-10 lanes for four hours between Oaklawn Drive and the I-610 intersection in the community of Metairie. The driver was issued a citation for having an unsecured load.
