Accident closes Highway 30 near Ames

A mishap that closed part of a central Iowa intersection today could have been worse. Story County Sheriff’s Department public information officer Captain Gary Foster says it was about eleven this morning. A northbound semi on Interstate 35 took the off-ramp to Highway 30 westbound, and going around the cloverleaf the load shifted and began to fall off the truck. Highway 30 was closed for an hour and a half before workers could clear one lane, after sheets of plywood fell from the tractor-trailer. Foster says the load shifted, either not fastened down right or from a strap breaking, and it made the truck roll over but nobody was hurt. There have been several bad accidents at that busy highway intersection, but the usual factors — unmatched speed of merging traffic and poor visibility — don’t seem to be factors in the rollover today. Foster says drivers should know that coming around an off-ramp they need to be going a reasonable speed, and any load properly secured, though in this case he doesn’t think the environment was a factor. Crews expected to get the rest of Highway 30 cleared by the end of the day.