Residents in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, have been noticing the smell of jet fuel around the hamlet since Thursday afternoon, when a fuel truck sprung a leak, leaving puddles of gasoline on a local road.

The M&T truck was travelling west along one of the hamlet's main roads when one of its fittings came loose. Fuel started gushing from the 101-millimetre opening, leaving a trail of gasoline stretching over 300 metres.

"It let go around here in front of the RCMP station, and it poured fuel on the road in front of the hamlet office, from the RCMP station, to the Co-op," Payl Waye, Rankin Inlet's senior administrative officer, said Thursday.

"This is it. It's pretty well contained within the roadblocks."

Mayor Lorne Kusugak said the hamlet and M&T are working together to clean up the spilled fuel, scraping up contaminated soil and replacing it with fresh soil.

"There's been two dump trucks hauling crushed gravel towards the area that's contaminated," Kusugak said. "So it looks like they're doing a good job of containing it."

The roads were expected to be re-opened to traffic Friday, but Kusugak said the jet fuel smell will likely linger for a couple more days.

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