A wine spillage on the M56 near Frodsham last year is among the weirdest motorway clean-up staff have had to contend with.
Raw human sewage, live chickens and 20 tonnes of Marmite all feature in Highways England’s ‘top ten strangest spills’ list.
The Government-owned company, which runs the country’s motorway network, compiled the list to highlight the mammoth challenges it faces in clearing incidents and fixing damage which can cause hours of disruption to road users.
The North West can lay claim to two of the top ten.
In the early hours of May 14, 2015, a lorry travelling on the M62 near Manchester lost its load of 6,000 chickens.
More than 1,000 of the chickens died but rescuers were able to save thousands after several hours of searching in the dark.
Two months later, a collision between junctions 33 and 34 of the M6 near Lancaster resulted in powdered cement mixing with diesel and engine oil.
A race against time ensued to clear it up before it started to set on the carriageway on one of the hottest afternoons that summer.
The road was eventually reopened to drivers 18 hours later.
Melanie Clarke, director of customer operations at Highways England, said: “Our roads are among the safest in the world, and safety is our number one priority.
“Our role is to ensure we clear incidents quickly and keep traffic moving to minimise delays.
"We work closely with the emergency services, in challenging circumstances, to try to keep drivers moving after an incident.
“We know drivers get frustrated when their journeys are disrupted but we do all we can to clean the road quickly after an incident – and it’s often much more complicated than simply moving the vehicles off the road to reopen it.
"That’s why it can often take longer for us to safely reopen roads when a potentially dangerous substance is spilled in an incident.
Expecting the unexpected
“Our teams expect the unexpected, but of course, when you’re dealing with ten tonnes of salmon, dangerous toxic chemicals, or emulsion paint, the clean-up operation is somewhat complicated.”
Highways England also identified other strange spills which were pipped to the post in making the top ten, such as 24 tonnes of lard on the M11 in Essex earlier this month, 18,000 litres of blue paint on the A1 in Markham Moor in 2009 as well as the 2014 wine bottle incident on the M56 between junctions 12 and 14.
