BRINKLEY, Ark. — The scene of a deadly accident that happened along I-40 eastbound on Monday evening looks a lot different now.
About 24 hours ago, the miles-long stretch of highway was severely backed up due to an accident involving three 18-wheelers, one of which was carrying military explosives.
The accident led to a mile-wide radius being evacuated, and traffic for several miles on I-40 being diverted through Highway 70 in the small town of Brinkley, Arkansas.
“We’ve been out here all night working traffic,” said Brinkley Police Chief Ed Randle, who was controlling the traffic flow on Tuesday morning.
The initial accident was caused by a grassfire along the side of the interstate that led to traffic backing up and, eventually, the crash.
One of the drivers of the 18-wheelers tragically lost their life as a result of the accident.
This led to the normally wide-open Brinkley streets being inundated with 18-wheelers and other travelers.
"We had traffic coming from three directions, which is 70 east, 70 west, and 49 south,” said Randle. “It was a constant stream all night."
He said that everyone in his department did their best to handle the traffic boom with the help of other state and local agencies. However, the sheer volume of traffic led to a few incidents.
"We had a couple of accidents,” Randle said. “Trucks backing into trucks, a public truck hit some passenger cars."
By Tuesday afternoon, things had for the most part returned to normal.
Some people like Cody Icenhower, who lives in Lonoke and works in Brinkley, explained how there wasn't much that could be done in the early morning hours.
"Usually I-40 is the only way we got,” Icenhower said. “And then I tried to go down 70. It looked the same way. But what’s usually a 30-minute drive to work turned into about an hour and a half."
Despite that, Icenhower said he still got lucky with only having to deal with the morning traffic because those who were traveling shortly after the wreck had it far worse.
"Crazy thing is I guess people [have] been stopped for quite some time,” Icenhower said. “There was trucks and 18-wheelers parked on the side with people sleeping. So I guess they'd been stuck for a while."
According to ARDOT, things eventually started to clear up when the hazardous materials from the first truck were loaded onto another one.
By 10:45 a.m. on Tuesday, I-40 was back open, and most of the traffic in Brinkley had died down by about 1:00 p.m.
Chief Randle credited Arkansas State Police, and both the Monroe and St. Francis County Sheriff’s Departments for helping the Brinkley PD clear things up after the accident.