{"id":804,"date":"2021-01-25T08:48:33","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T13:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/2020\/04\/tanker-truck-accident-leads-to-evacuation-water-shutdown\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T19:36:32","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T00:36:32","slug":"tanker-truck-accident-leads-to-evacuation-water-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/tanker-truck-accident-leads-to-evacuation-water-shutdown\/","title":{"rendered":"Tanker Truck Accident Leads to Evacuation and Water Shutdown Near Williamsburg, Kentucky"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"overflow: hidden; width: 560px; height: 315px;\" src=\"https:\/\/play.syndicaster.tv\/v1\/widgets\/b611af00-4f40-0133-8f44-7a163e5e80da\/player.html?vid=7611370&amp;tags=&amp;volume=100&amp;autostart=false&amp;autonext=false&amp;share_link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wtvq.com%2F2020%2F02%2F03%2Farea-evacuated-semi-hauling-hazardous-material-overturns-whitley-county%2F\" width=\"560px\" height=\"315px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe>A semi-truck carrying the chemical butyl acrylates flipped over near the town of Williamsburg, Kentucky, on the morning of Feb. 3, 2020. The chemical spill <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wtvq.com\/2020\/02\/03\/area-evacuated-semi-hauling-hazardous-material-overturns-whitley-county\/\">resulted in four houses being evacuated and the city&#8217;s raw water intake being closed for a little over a day<\/a>, according to ABC 36\u00a0WVTQ.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\">A Lost Driver<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The accident occurred a little before 6 AM when the truck&#8217;s driver attempted to turn his vehicle around on a small bridge outside of the city. The tanker attached to his truck flipped over the bridge, spilling about 1,600 gallons of butyl acrylates onto the train tracks below.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The driver had spent the night at a truck stop in Williamsburg and was attempting to drive to Richmond, Kentucky. He said that he had found himself in a tough situation after his GPS gave him bad directions, forcing him to turn around.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Fortunately, the truck&#8217;s driver was unharmed by the accident and was able to remove himself from the vehicle&#8217;s cockpit before an emergency team arrived.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\">A Long\u00a0Cleanup<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Following the spill, four homes that were near the spill site were evacuated as a precaution and the road that the accident had occurred on was closed. A team that included firefighters from the nearby towns of Pleasant View, Emlyn and South Whitley and personnel from Kentucky Emergency Management began to perform clean-up. The majority of the spill stayed on the railroad line, forcing workers to remove 39 feet of track, ties and gravel. In all, the cleanup took until past 1 AM the next day and also involved unloading the tanker, getting it upright and hauling it away. Part of the lengthy cleanup involved waiting for another tanker to come from Indianapolis, a decision that local officials noted came from the trucking company.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Further examination during the cleanup also revealed that some of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenewsjournal.net\/city-of-williamsburg-reopens-water-intake-tuesday\/\">chemicals had runoff into the nearby Clear Fork River.<\/a> Officials shut off Williamsburg&#8217;s raw water supply, giving the Kentucky Division of Water time to perform testing and ensure safety. The water supply was reopened on Feb 5, 2020.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">According to Whitley County Emergency Management Director Danny Moses, no other areas would have problems with their water because the chemicals were quickly diluted.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;It [the Clear Fork River] will eventually reach Lake Cumberland, but it will dissipate even further before it gets anywhere close,&#8221; said Moses, speaking with the area&#8217;s local newspaper, The News Journal.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Butyl acrylates is a chemical that is typically used in manufacturing for paints, sealants and coating. It is highly flammable and has a very strong odor that one nearby resident described as &#8220;unreal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><script>(function(w,pk){var s=w.createElement('script');s.type='text\/javascript';s.async=true;s.src='\/\/pumpkin.brafton.com\/pumpkin.js';var f=w.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];f.parentNode.insertBefore(s,f);if(!pk.__S){window._pk=pk;pk.__S = 1.1;}pk.host='conversion.brafton.com';pk.clientId='1646';})(document,window._pk||[])<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Four homes in Williamsburg, Kentucky were evacuated when a truck&#8217;s tanker flipped over a nearby bridge and spilled about 1,600 gallons of\u00a0butyl acrylates, a common manufacturing chemical.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[54],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":937,"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions\/937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intranet.chemservice.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}