Interstate 81 northbound is closed in southwestern Cumberland County while crews work to clean up a two-truck crash that sent the driver of one rig to the hospital.
Cumberland County emergency dispatchers said a Life Lion helicopter was used to fly the driver to an area hospital. No information was available on the driver's injuries or condition.
The crash happened around 4:27 this morning near mile marker 35 in Penn Township. The crash scene is around two miles south of the Newville exit and about six miles north of the King Street exit at Shippensburg. Police said it involved a tractor trailer and a tanker truck.
One of the trucks reportedly rear-ended the other. Police did not say which of the two trucks was the one that drove into the other and did not release which rig the injured driver was in.
Traffic is being detoured around the area using U.S. Route 11 and Walnut Bottom Road. Motorists using those roads should anticipate heavy traffic, especially truck traffic that normally uses the busy interstate, which carries over 100,000 vehicles daily in the Harrisburg area, about 24 percent of which are trucks, according to one study.
State police said the road will remain closed while crews work to remove the two trucks. A police spokesman had no time frame for the highway reopening.
“It's going to be an extended closure,” he said.
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