Seattle: Cloudy With A Chance Of Two-Pound Metal Balls

This strange event took place around the end of last month in West Seattle, Washington. It resulted in a small fine for a truck driver. Some of his cargo of 22,000 two pound steel griding balls used in mining to grind rocks into sand, escaped and went rolling down a hill.

Videos:

SeattlePD … shut down 30th Ave SW and SW Genessee. Truck carrying metal balls loses its load, sending the two pound balls tumbling down hill. #KOMONews

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“I looked up the street and there was a sea of balls rolling down the hill making an incredible noise and hitting the cars that are here,” Robert Duffy, a West Seattle resident, told KOMO News.

On Wednesday, Duffy captured a video of what he saw, which was shared on Twitter by a reporter.

“Got home from work and I couldn’t park on my street, ’cause there’s hundreds of thousands of steel balls on it,” Luke Gills, another neighborhood resident, also told KOMO News.

The steel balls rolled out of a semitrailer truck up the street. While there probably weren’t hundreds of thousands of them, the Seattle television station reported that the collection of 2 pound balls totaled 44,000 pounds. The balls appear to be “just really big ball bearings,” Seattle Police spokesman Detective Patrick Michaud told the Seattle Times.

In the video, a car can be seen backing up, trying to avoid the oncoming balls. Several cars got damaged, and while there were no injuries reported, the police were called and forced to temporarily close the street.

KOMO reported that in the state of Washington drivers are required by law to “secure their load.” Accordingly, the driver of the truck, Robert Herman, has been cited for failing to do so, with the citation carrying a $136 fine. …

Herman said the police were going to get some people to help clean up the balls, and he likely would roll on to Salt Lake City — hopefully with his load better secured.

Via NPR

This gives us a little clue into something much bigger that is going on. Where were these to be delivered? Salt Lake City. What if this is just one of thousands of such trucks? Ever been to a beach? Where did you think ALL that sand was made? Right. Salt Lake City.

Just kidding.

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TrueStrange.com