Driver’s U-turn flips semi — leaving 5,000 chickens ‘running loose’ or dead, Wash. trooper says

Most U-turns don’t end quite so poorly.

A semi-truck traveling near Vancouver, Washington, was carrying more than 5,000 chickens on Monday just after 3 p.m. But when the driver tried to make an illegal U-turn, he rolled the large truck on its side and released crate after crate of chickens, according to state troopers.

Some of the thousands of chickens were “running lose” as authorities arrived, State Trooper Will Finn wrote on Twitter. Many birds were dead. The crashed truck also blocked traffic on State Route 502, troopers said.

The driver of the semi-truck was uninjured in the incident, Finn said.

About an hour after the crash, a cleanup crew got to the scene and started picking up the dead, injured and live chickens from the truck. Troopers said they don’t yet know how many of the chickens died.

Photos and videos from the scene show the semi resting on its side with the crates of chickens strewn on the side of the road.

Some chickens lay lifeless on the grass or pavement, video shows. Others fluttered about as cranes lifted the crates, and as workers dressed in fluorescent vests began the cleanup. Clucking could be heard over the soft mechanical roar of the machinery picking up the mess.

The driver was traveling to Longview, Washington, for Foster Farms, Finn told a reporter with KGW. The truck driver will face a citation for unlawful U-turn in a commercial vehicle.

“As they made that U-Turn, the truck turned over, spilling chickens onto the roadway,” Finn explained in the interview.

Troopers told locals to expect delays as the road was blocked off. A detour was established at the intersection of route 502 and 29th Avenue in Dollar Corner, where the rollover occurred, troopers said.

This story was originally published June 25, 2018 at 7:56 PM with the headline "Driver’s U-turn flips semi — leaving 5,000 chickens ‘running loose’ or dead, Wash. trooper says."