Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Millions of Bees Released When Tractor Trailer Crashes

I've come very close to driving off the road and killing innocent people in the past when a spider dropped
down from the headliner of my car onto the steering wheel, so imagine the reaction when drivers on a highway had to drive through millions of swarming bees.

It happened this morning in Newark, Delaware when the driver of a tractor trailer overturned his truck on a highway ramp, releasing his cargo of about 16-20 million honey bees. The driver and two passengers were taken to a nearby hospital with about 50 to 100 stings each and other people driving by on the highway were also stung.

Bee handlers were brought in and worked with firefighters to spray water to disperse the bees. I'm not sure if we have one of these, but the authorities there have a "Honeybee Swarm Removal Plan" that they put into action for the first time. The highway ramp where this happened was closed for twelve hours, according to the Idaho Press Tribune.

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About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.