Messy Morning Commute: Milk Truck Spills Load, Ambulance Tips Over plus 20 other accidents

WINNEBAGO COUNTY - Icy morning conditions on area roads caught many drivers by surprise, sending cars sliding.  Several freak accidents sent an EMS crew person to the hospital and another held up US-20 traffic for hours.

The dangerous commute starts around 5:00 AM when Winnebago County Sheriff and fire departments are dispatched US-20 by Meridian Road.  A Win-Bur-Sew ambulance was responding to a possible car accident when the ambulance itself hit a patch of black ice, sending the vehicle out of control and landing the ambulance on its side.  One of the EMS crew members was transported to Rockford Memorial Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

"[The ambulance] has no patients in it," said Winnebago County Sheriff Richard Meyers.  "It was a minor personal injury accident."

Forget the old saying, "don't cry over spilled milk."  A Prairie Farms truck tipped over on US-20 Westbound by I-39 spilling milk and eggs on the road and the ditch it crashed into.  The accident tied up the morning commute for hours.

"It made quite a mess, spilled milk all over the place," said Meyers.  "Took quite a while to clean that up."

Rockford Police responded to an accident on Perryville Road at Spring Creek.  A car crashed into a food-service truck there, but no major injuries resulted.  That was just another of the more than 20 accidents caused by rough road conditions Tuesday morning.  Police say it was a busy morning for them.

"We held some of our night-shift over that were involved in handling some of these accidents," said Meyers.

"We also got our day-shift people from our meetings that we have here in the morning, we just by-passed those and sent people right out onto the streets."

The only accident injury that required further medical attention was the accident involving the ambulance.