What happens when you leave 40,000 pounds of extra firm tofu outside for three weeks? One Missouri town recently found out. And it wasn’t pretty.
The tofu imbroglio began on March 1, when a tractor-trailer hauling that staple of stir-fry dishes barreled off a highway at about 75 miles an hour, and plunged into a ravine.
The driver was unharmed, according to Brandon Williams, the chief of the Doolittle Rural Fire Protection District, which responded to the crash off Interstate 44 in Jerome, Mo., a small town about 120 miles southwest of St. Louis.
But the truck was wrecked — and the tofu was worse for the wear. Some of it was lodged inside the trailer. Some had spilled out in boxes.
The tofu and the truck languished in the ravine for three weeks while the private towing companies that had been hired to clean up the mess tried to confirm that the trucking company had enough insurance to pay for the job.
As a result, 20 tons of tofu “sat out there in the heat and cold for three weeks, just stewing,” Chief Williams said, adding that when drivers had to slow down at the highway exit near the crash site, the smell “hit you like a brick wall.”
“It was like a dead animal, but worse,” he said. “It’s probably one of the worst smells I’ve smelled in my life, and I’ve smelled some nasty stuff.”
Donald Neal, the general manager of D&D Towing & Repair in Rolla, Mo., which has been helping to haul away the tofu, said it was a labor-intensive job because flash floods had pushed some tofu into a creek. Some washed onto land more than a mile from the crash scene. It all has to be cleaned up by hand, he said.
“It was worse than a landfill on a hot July day,” Mr. Neal said. “It was rancid, for sure. I dealt with it. There were some wearing masks.”
He said crews initially used a drone to map out how far downstream the tofu had been carried.
Some tofu was still in the creek on Thursday, and workers have had to “wade through water that’s four or five feet deep in places” to remove it, Mr. Neal said, adding: “We have to eventually have an amphibious vehicle out there.”
The Doolittle Rural Fire Protection District has referred to the mess on its Facebook page as “the infamous Jerome Tofu Monster” and the cleanup as “the Great Battle of Jerome.”
Dan Wojcikowski, an owner of Big Boy’s Towing and Recovery, based in Eureka, Mo., who has been helping to oversee the cleanup, said it had required $3 million worth of equipment, including a skid steer, two excavators, a dump truck and four dumpsters.
A spokeswoman for the Missouri State Highway Patrol said she did not have any immediate information about whether the driver had been charged or cited in the crash. The trucking company did not respond to a voice mail message and a text message.
This is not the first food-related truck crash in the area. Last August, Chief Williams said, a truck carrying 40,000 pounds of rib-eye steaks went up in flames on Interstate 44.
On Tuesday, crews siphoned the gas out of the truck that was carrying tofu, and pulled it out of the ravine using a crane. They dumped the tofu that was still in the trailer in a landfill. Mr. Wojcikowski said it was unclear how much the cleanup might cost because it might take a week to finish the job.
“At this point, we’re just trying to get the creek, and all the stuff that’s in the creek,” he said. “It’s going to take time. It’s all footwork.”
Although some previous truck crashes have spilled Alfredo sauce, wine and tomatoes, this one did not pique Mr. Neal’s appetite. He said he doesn’t even like tofu, and isn’t eager to try it now.
“I’m a red-meat eater,” he said.
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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