Pet food truck crashes on I-80, causing huge back-up

Interstate 80 is reopened after a fiery crash that closed eastbound lanes in far eastern Iowa for eight hours today (Monday). The state patrol says an eastbound semi carrying petfood hit a guardrail on a bridge over the Cedar River about half past six, and burst into flames. The driver and a passenger in the big rig apparently escaped serious injury, but both eastbound lanes of the interstate were closed between the West Liberty and Wilton exits, east of mile marker 259. DOT inspectors carefully checked the river bridge to make sure it wasn’t seriously damaged. It wasn’t until after two P-M the eastbound lanes reopened. Eeastbound I-80 traffic had backed up for miles.