Fuel tanker carrying 8,000 gallons of fuel punctured, leaking in Phoenix
By Dani Birzer and Steven Sarabia
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PHOENIX (KPHO, KTVK) — A fuel tanker carrying around 8,000 gallons of fuel was punctured early Sunday morning, causing hundreds of gallons of unleaded gasoline to leak in northwest Phoenix.
Phoenix firefighters responded around 3:30 a.m. to reports that a fuel tank was leaking on the ground near 35th Avenue and Bethany Home Road. HazMat teams were able to build berms to keep the gasoline out of the storm drains, and two local businesses were evacuated. Officials say another tanker is en route to the incident to transfer the leftover fuel inside the tanker to it. No one was injured. Drivers were advised to avoid the area during the clean-up, but the roads have since reopened.
To learn more about the danger of a fuel spill, Arizona’s Family reached out to local environmentalists. “Behind any oil spill, there’s always a big gas vapor cloud that travels well away from where the liquid is, so a spark or match could explode or set things on fire,” said Steve Brittle, an environmentalist in Phoenix.
Brittle said it’s important crews work quickly when it comes to clean up. “It’s toxic, bad for you, and harmful to breathe, so it’s never good when these things happen,” said Brittle. One of the biggest concerns when it comes to leaks like this is if any of it ends up in a storm drain because there is a chance it can end up in our rivers.
With the toxic derailment in Ohio and the more recent nitric acid spill off I-10 near Tucson earlier this week, Brittle wants companies and the government to take a more proactive response in the future. “Folks are more into responding instead of planning to prevent things from going wrong, and terrible things happen and then say we’ll that’s awful, and then they don’t change anything.”
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