150 gallons of fuel spill after 18 wheeler crash on I-10 in Harrison County
An accident on Interstate 10 early Friday morning caused 150 gallons of fuel to spill from an 18-wheeler onto the soil next to the interstate.
The crash with an SUV at about 3:30 a.m. sent the driver of the smaller vehicle to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, Harrison County Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said in an interview Friday morning.
The wreck happened near the DeLisle exit at mile marker 21, westbound.
The fuel spill immediately posed two dangers, Sullivan said: first, the risk of fire, and second, the possibility that the fuel would flow into the Wolf River and harm wildlife.
“From the environmental standpoint, for the aquatic and the wildlife... the fish being killed because of the fuel spill, and birds eating the fish and just one thing after the other, the whole chain of environmental issues,” Sullivan said. “It wasn’t there to begin with and so we don’t want to leave it there.”
A crew of six firefighters, at least one representative from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, and employees from an environmental cleanup company worked the scene for six or seven hours, Sullivan said.
First, firefighters constructed a dyke around the scene to try to catch the fuel and prevent it from flowing toward the river and its tributaries.
Then, workers placed pads around the scene to absorb the fuel. When they’ve fully absorbed the fuel, they’ll be disposed of at a hazardous waste facility.
Traffic on I-10 was backed up as one lane was closed during the clean-up, but Sullivan said that as of 10 a.m. the interstate should be completely open.
The 18-wheeler was carrying 12 fork lifts from South Carolina to Louisiana.
Fuel spills on America’s highways are not uncommon. In March, a semi-truck spilled 11,000 gallons of diesel fuel on an interstate in Colorado.
