A highway full of offal, you should clean up those tons of rotting meat. Mark Groenen (48) from Aalst-Waalre is one of those people. He shoveled tons of offal off the A67 for hours on Thursday night. “Those trucks were completely covered, the crash barrier, the highway, it was even in the cabin.”
He had already completed an entire working day when his boss called around six o’clock on Thursday. If he wanted to go to an accident to clear the highway. A job that often occurs for the crane operator at Heezen Sloopwerken in Eindhoven. “Sometimes it’s a truck with perfume or tools. We experience all kinds of things, but this was a very special one, I must say.”
Together with about fifty to sixty people he was standing there on the highway, he tells Friday morning in the radio show Wakker! from Omroep Brabant. With his crane he assisted the people who are shoveling by hand on the road.
“You can’t just deal with such a large mountain of waste by hand. You need heavy artillery for that. Occasionally you also get out to help with the hand, because you do it all together. Those trucks were completely covered, the crash barrier, the highway, it was even in the cabin, really filthy.”
“And that smell… Well, what does it smell like? Dead meat?”
With his grab he shoveled everything into containers for disposal. “I have never seen so many intestines, livers, stomachs and stuff together. You pick it up with the grabber and everything folds open, in all kinds of colors. And that smell…. Well, what does it smell like? Dead meat? In any case, there is nothing wrong with my nose, I have noticed that.”
They worked all night, they even got catering. But did it go in? “Ham sandwich, frankfurter and a soup on the side. That went fine, as long as you’re hungry enough.”
“I put five air fresheners in my truck, but it didn’t really help.”
Until half past five Friday morning they all worked together to get the highway completely clean. Then he dropped his machine back at the boss. But not before getting some air fresheners from a gas station. “I hung about five of those fragrance things in the cabin. In the hope that it will smell nice of lavender when the next one steps in. But when I took my bag out of the cabin half an hour later, I still couldn’t smell it.”
The car also goes through the car wash because there were still the necessary remains to be found there, according to Mark. “I myself jumped into the shower at work, grabbed a new coat and a new pair of shoes because I couldn’t do anything with them anymore.”
Besides all that rancidity, Mark also had a good laugh that night. “We all thought it was funny somewhere. Normally, such accidents often involve injuries or worse. That was not the case now, that also helped.”
“And it’s just our job, isn’t it? Those guys who stood on the highway all night with their hands and feet in a mess had it even harder than me.”
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