Truck mishap spreads sulfur on Yosemite route

Yosemite National Park, Calif.—It took more than 24 hours of a professional environmental cleanup team working carefully not to cause any ignition to deal with the spilled contents of hundreds of bags of dusting sulfur from a flatbed truck near the south entrance to Yosemite. When they were finished, the team from PARC Environmental of Fresno had worked from late Sunday evening until Monday night, April 23, filling 20 cubic-yard roll-off bins and loading them on a special truck for disposal at a hazardous waste facility. There were a couple of fires that occurred before the PARC personnel arrived on the scene. The spill was caused when the driver crashed into a guardrail and ended up spreading the sulfur for a mile along Highway 41, which links up with the southern entrance of Yosemite National Park. The accident meant that nobody could exit or enter the park through that route, to the disappointment of a crowd of visitors showing up to take advantage of free entrance during National Park Week. Investigators questioned the driver to see why he was carrying a commercial load of sulfur into a national park where commercial trucks are banned. He was held by the National Park Service police for suspicion of driving under the influence.