A hazmat team from Moncton were called in to help deal with a chemical spill from a truck at the Aulac Big Stop on Thursday.
Keith Guptill is deputy chief with the Moncton Fire Department (and also former Sackville Fire Department chief.) Guptill says that after a truck driver pulled into the Big Stop on Thursday morning, he noticed something leaking out of the front end of his trailer. “Come to find it was leaking at the back as well,” says Guptill. “So he parked right away and called 911.”
The truck was carrying a chemical classified as UN3264, meaning “corrosive liquid, acidic, inorganic.”
The Sackville Fire Department were the first to respond, says Guptill, and in turn called Amherst, which has a scout team for hazardous materials, and also the Moncton heavy hazmat team.
“While our folks were en route, [Sackville Fire Department] Chief Bowser was sending us all kinds of information to let us know what our folks were going to be dealing with when they got there,” says Guptill. “I can’t say enough positive about Sackville and Amherst and the help that they were. The things that they had already set up in place before we even got there… it was amazing.”
Guptill says the spill was relatively small, with roughly 200 litres of an 800 litre load leaking onto the ground, and another 200 inside the trailer which the team managed to seal up. Sand was used to absorb the spilled substance, which was then hauled away for disposal.
Guptill says 14 members of the Moncton team responded to the call, and spent about 9 hours on site in Aulac.
Guptill says no neighbouring residences endured negative effects from the spill.
The Moncton Fire Department’s heavy hazmat team is a recent addition to the department. If the same call had come in three years ago, says Guptill, a team would have been called from Saint John or Fredericton to respond to the spill.
