Twenty tons of squid spilled across a busy Rhode Island road after a lorry crash in the coastal town of Narragansett, blocking traffic for almost eight hours and prompting locals to dub the scene a 'squidpocalypse', police said.
The tractor-trailer was hauling roughly 40,000lb of raw squid to a processing facility outside town when it attempted a tight turn at about 9.30am, the Narragansett Police Department said in a statement. As the driver was 'negotiating' the bend, the trailer separated from the cab, toppled on to its side and ripped open, scattering the load and shutting all lanes at a key junction in the seaside community.
State police cited the driver for failure to secure a load. The driver and a passenger escaped without injury.
Crews Clear 20 Tons of Squid as Cleanup Drags on for Eight Hours
Officers and fire crews spent much of Sunday dealing with the fallout. Police said a 'substantial portion' of the cargo hit the tarmac, creating a thick layer of seafood under a hot August sun and causing 'significant traffic disruptions and an extended road closure'.
The junction remained shut from about 9.30am until roughly 5.15pm while heavy machinery and road crews worked through the afternoon to clear the cephalopods from the asphalt. Temperatures in Rhode Island climbed above 27C on Sunday, causing the squid to decay quickly.
Fire department personnel joined cleanup crews with mechanical loaders, working in the heat to shift tonnes of decomposing carcasses before they seeped further into the road surface. Local resident Richard Stevens told NBC affiliate WJAR that the smell spread rapidly.
'Squid has a distinctive odour to it,' he said. 'I'm a fisherman and I use squid for bait. I'm quite used to it, but it can be very foul-smelling especially if it lies on the road and stays there for a while.'
Calamari Capital: Why the Squid Spill Mattered to Rhode Island
The load was not an unusual one for the area. Rhode Island is a regional hub for the US squid industry, with Narragansett repeatedly described by local outlets as its centre, and millions of pounds of longfin and shortfin squid pass through the state's ports each year en route to restaurants and distributors nationwide.
Calamari is the state's official appetiser, a detail that gave the spill an ironic edge as social media users latched on to images of a lorry's worth of calamari strewn across a beach town road. The cargo had been destined for a processing plant outside town, police said, but much of it instead ended up scooped into industrial buckets and hauled off as waste.
Crews also had to manage the slippery residue left behind, since squid remain slick even after the visible debris is cleared, posing an ongoing hazard to the road surface. Rhode Island State Police confirmed the citation issued to the driver over the failure to secure the load but had not announced any further enforcement action at the time of reporting.
Driver Cited After Trailer Separates in Narragansett Crash
No other vehicles were directly involved in the crash, according to the accounts released so far, and there were no reports of injuries among motorists caught in the resulting traffic jam. The incident serves as a striking reminder of the unusual logistical challenges that can emerge when industrial supply chains intersect with everyday roadways.
While the squid was ultimately lost to waste rather than reaching its intended destination, the cleanup effort demonstrated the coordinated response required when tonnes of perishable cargo are suddenly deposited on a public highway. Local authorities have not indicated whether any additional safety reviews will be conducted following the incident.
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