WATERVILLE — The driver of a tractor-trailer was apparently distracted when his truck careened across the highway, crashed into guardrails then jackknifed on Interstate 95 on Thursday morning on the Kennedy Memorial Drive overpass.
The 10:19 a.m. accident backed traffic up in the northbound lanes of the highway into the afternoon as vehicles were detoured onto Kennedy Memorial Drive in Waterville and Oakland. The wreck was reported removed and the interstate reopened at about 3:40 p.m.
At 2:15 p.m., as crews began to remove the tractor-trailer, northbound traffic on the highway was still backed up,” Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety, said in a news release at that time. Reports were that traffic was backed up as far as Sidney, six or seven miles south of the crash.
The driver, Paul Cusano, 54, of Epping, New Hampshire, was taken to a hospital with minor injuries.
McCausland’s release said Cusano was apparently distracted, but did not give details.
Cusano was driving north in the 2010 Volvo truck, which was hauling a shipping container loaded with golf tees, when it apparently struck the guardrails on the east side of I-95 just before the overpass, then crossed over and hit the west side and crashed on the east side north of the overpass, according to Maine State Police Trooper Chris Carr, at the scene.
“He hit the guardrails and jackknifed and came to rest up on the guardrails,” Carr said.
The truck, whose cab door bore the name PLK Trucking, Epping, New Hampshire, was destroyed, according to Carr.
Cusano, who was walking around at the scene, was taken by Delta Ambulance to a hospital, but it was not immediately known which one.
Waterville firefighters, state Department of Transportation workers and state police worked at the scene, where the truck and container were twisted and stretched across the northbound travel and breakdown lanes, with the truck cab facing south and the container facing north. Debris from the crash was strewn over the highway.
Firefighters put sawdust on the road near the truck’s cab to soak up fluids, including spilled diesel, according to McCausland, who said that the state Department of Environmental Protection cleaned up the fuel.
The truck was heading to Pride Manufacturing in Burnham, which makes wooden golf tees.
Vehicles leaving I-95 via exit 127 either turned onto Kennedy Memorial Drive to head east to Waterville or west to Oakland, or they crossed over Kennedy Memorial Drive to re-enter I-95 north.
Waterville police reported no difficulties with traffic in the city as a result of traffic being rerouted off I-95.
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