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About eight million dimes totaling $800,000 spilled from a lorry onto a highway and caused a 14-hour pickup and cleanup effort.
An 18-wheeler flipped on Highway 287 near Alvord High School and scattered the loose coins around 5.30am on Tuesday, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The truck rolled on its side after the driver veered off the highway and overcorrected, the department stated. The driver and a passenger were taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and have been released.
It was not immediately known why the lorry was carrying so many dimes.
Video recorded by FOX 4’s SKY 4 showed a worker sitting on the side of the road picking dimes off the ground. Four other workers, three wearing high visibility clothing, swept the roadway using brooms and shovels.
Other workers used a vacuum truck to suck coins from dirt and greenery along the highway. United States Armored Company workers assisted in the cleanup operation. The inside of the lorry appeared mostly empty, except for some lingering coins.
‘The funniest part to me was that they picked up the dimes using the vacuum trucks that are used to suck out sewage and water and stuff like that,’ Alvord Mayor Caleb Caviness told The New York Times.
It was not until around 7.30pm that the highway reopened.
By Wednesday afternoon, most of the dimes were likely collected and the rest of them were washed away by rain that amounted to four inches and caused minor flooding in town, said Caviness.
The mayor said the rumor in town was that $8million in dimes had dropped, and that flashing lights from their reflection were visible.
‘We were joking around that the city of Alvord would be metal detecting,’ said Caviness, but added that a herd of people did not actually go out there.
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Where the lorry was heading was not clear.
Alvord is about 75 miles northwest of Dallas.
It happened more than two-and-a-half years after a lorry overturned and spilled more than 150,000 tomatoes onto Interstate 80 in Vacaville, California.
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