Vehicle drives away still attached to diesel pump, causing spill in Donovans
A truck pulled away from a fuel pump at Irving in Donovans Industrial Park in Mount Pearl Wednesday night, causing a spill of diesel fuel.
"He was getting diesel fuel and inadvertently didn't put the hose back. So the hose broke away," said Barry Burke, acting platoon chief with the St. John's Fire Department. He said it was likely a transport truck or some kind of commercial vehicle.
Burke said it was impossible to tell how much fuel had been spilled and that they wouldn't know until they found the vehicle that drove away and figured out how much fuel went into its tank.
Firefighters poured bags of absorbant material — "like kitty litter" — over the spill, with long piles of the fuel-spoaked material snaking back and forth from the Irving diesel pump down toward a nearby storm drain.
They built up a small berm of absorbant material around the drain to keep fuel from running into it.
"We used our gas detector, put it in the storm drain, and no reading, so that's a good sign," he said.
"Everything we're doing now is precautionary. We're still putting all the pieces together."
Burke said efforts were underway to figure out who had last been at the fuel pump.
Read more stories from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
