Two tanker trucks collided on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick Wednesday evening, sparking a massive fire that gutted both trucks and halting traffic for miles in both directions.
State Police said the trucks collided on the outer roadway on northbound side of the turnpike, near mile marker 88. The drivers in each of the trucks suffered only minor injuries.
The outer roadway remained closed as emergency responders attended to the scene, but the inner roadway was open to traffic by night, with two lanes getting by. Traffic by Wednesday night was backed up about 9 miles, with vehicles stuck bumper to bumper from Cranbury all the way up to the scene.
The southbound lanes are not affected.
Social media posts showed heavy backups as bright flames and thick black smoke were shooting into the sky.
A video posted to Instagram by Connor Rowe after his vehicle passed the burning trucks from the other side of the turnpike showed flames ravaging the entire length of the big rigs.
It's not clear what type of material the trucks were carrying.
Last week, a dump truck crash on the turnpike in Linden sparked a fire and caused a miles-long traffic standstill that lasted several hours. The driver, 62-year-old Allen Yuhasz of Woodbridge Township, was killed when his truck struck the Wood Avenue overpass near Exit 13A.
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