A tanker truck recently rolled over and ruptured, spilling diesel fuel into a creek in Alton. The truck went off of the Homer Adams Parkway Extension as it attempted to navigate a curve in the road, and it rolled down an embankment to the edge of the creek. As the tanker rolled, rocks punctured it in multiple locations, and the top hatch of the tank came loose. Fortunately, the truck driver was not hurt. Traffic was diverted from the area for hours after the wreck to allow cleanup efforts to take place.
Trucking accidents involving hazardous materials like diesel fuel require an immediate and comprehensive response from more than the usual police, fire, and emergency rescue workers. Special teams of workers who are trained to manage releases of hazardous materials must be summoned to the accident scene as soon as possible. The type of personnel and materials required to respond to a hazardous materials trucking accident depends upon the type of hazardous materials released in the accident. Sometimes, people must be evacuated from the area surrounding a hazardous materials trucking wreck. It does not appear as though evacuation occurred after this tanker wreck.
After the aforementioned wreck, the Madison County Hazardous Materials Team rushed to the crash scene. A nearby fuel refinery sent a foam truck and several of its firefighters to aid in containment and cleanup efforts. As happens with many hazardous materials trucking accidents, multiple teams worked together to contain the diesel fuel and clean up the area. Heritage Environmental Services sent a group of workers to the accident scene to help with the task of cleaning up the spilled fuel.
Depending upon the size of the vehicle involved in the crash, a hazardous materials trucking accident can release any amount of hazardous material into the environment. The accident mentioned above did not cause a small release – over three thousand gallons of spilled diesel fuel were reportedly recovered from the crash site, and that number was not the final count. There are multiple ways that firefighters and hazardous materials response teams can remove hazardous materials from the environment. In the situation described above, firefighters used absorbent materials to remove some of the spilled fuel from the area. A vacuum truck also helped remove the spilled fuel. A tanker truck removed the fuel that remained inside of the wrecked tanker. Emergency workers kept track of where the spilled fuel was going as it headed down the creek. They placed an absorbent boom in the creek ahead of where the fuel had traveled and prevented it from going farther down the creek.
Trucks haul many kinds of things over American roads every day. Some of those things, like diesel fuel, can cause severe environmental damage and personal injury if they are released into the environment through a truck wreck. Hazardous materials truck wrecks are dangerous, and they are sometimes deadly. If you were hurt in a hazardous materials trucking accident, call the knowledgeable Mississippi Trucking Accident Attorney at Barrett Law PLLC, at 1 (800) 707-9577 today.
