Melo-n-dramatic

A Lorry crash had Ontario morning rush-hour commuters feeling a little melon-choly on Highway 401 today.

A truck carrying more than 10,000 pounds of watermelons rolled on its side and blocked both eastbound lanes near the Drumbo exit for about seven hours in the morning.

“We are talking about hundreds and hundreds of melons. I would imagine it would be a little messy,” Oxford OPP Const. Dennis Harwood said.

The driver was taken to hospital for minor injuries after the 4:45 a.m. crash.

Eastbound traffic was diverted to Highway 403 until the lanes were opened around noon.

Besides cleaning up the melons on the road, crews had the harder task of cleaning up broken crates of melons — originally stacked on top of each other — in the overturned trailer.

The trailer couldn’t be righted until all the melons and crates were cleared out with a front-end loader, Harwood said. “That was the big problem.”

It was too dangerous to allow eastbound traffic to use even one lane of Highway 401 during the cleanup, Harwood said.

“Whenever you have an accident like this everybody slows down to see what is going on.” That creates a chance of more accidents, he said.