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A container truck loaded with 17 tons of shrimp feed overturned this afternoon at the Belcan Bridge Roundabout. The driver Clifford Budna crawled out of the truck to safety but an overturned container in the middle of a busy intersection created a traffic nightmare.

Keith Swift Reporting,
Shortly after 3 this afternoon – this 18 wheel container truck was turning through the Bel-Can Bridge roundabout when the driver Clifford Budna apparently lost control and the truck overturned. Two witnesses in the area, one of whom spoke to us off camera, say they heard a loud bang and thought it was a collision.

Witness #1,
“I was standing right here and working and I all I saw was a lot of dust was flying in the air. When the vehicle was finished passing in front of me here, I see the truck was already fall down.”

Witness #2,
“We were talking and a friend of ours was standing right over here and we heard a loud bang so we came out to see and then when we looked we saw it was a flour mill truck and we went closer to see what was wrong and we saw a young man coming out of the truck through the window. He was limping and he came out and we called 911 and they responded quickly and the fireman came.”

Witness #1,
“Two or three minutes at least I saw the man came out and he didn’t get hurt and he was safe. That’s all.”

Witness #2,
“I mi think somebody got hurt bad the way how it sounded. I thought it was two cars crashed together but it wasn’t that.”

An ambulance took the driver Clifford Budna to the hospital but traffic at the city’s busiest intersection was disrupted for almost two hours because employees from ADM Belize Mills were still scooping up the container load of shrimp feed that had been spilled.

The driver was taking the container to be weighed at HD Thompson at mile one and a half on the Northern Highway. That’s right across from ADM Belize Mills but to get from one side of the highway to the other, the truck had to turn through the roundabout.

ADM Belize Mills manager Phillip Milikin told us this evening that he doesn’t believe that the driver lost control of the truck. He however declined to speculate on what might have caused the accident and told us he will await the outcome of the investigation. We should note that the Fire Department was on the scene because the truck’s large gas tank was a fire hazard.