A collision between two tractor-trailer trucks at Veterans Memorial Parkway – the U.S. Highway 301 bypass – and its intersection with the main highway south of Statesboro early Thursday resulted in an overturned fuel tanker truck leaking gasoline.
The Bulloch County 911 center logged the first call about the crash at 4:16 a.m. The Georgia State Patrol is handling the investigation. No information about the truck ownership, drivers or how the accident occurred had been received in time for this posting Thursday, after the Statesboro Herald had emailed a request to the GSP’s public information office in Atlanta, which accepts such queries only by email.
But the Statesboro Police Department and Statesboro Fire Department also responded to the accident and remained on the scene for hours, in different roles. One person was transported by the Emergency Medical Service for treatment, and Statesboro Police Chief Mike Broadhead said he heard that the injuries were not life-threatening.
Police actively redirected traffic around the accident scene until after 8:30 a.m. A Statesboro city streets crew had arrived quickly and set up traffic barriers. Georgia Department of Transportation personnel also arrived, and afterward one SPD officer remained to monitor the situation, Broadhead said.
“The problem was that that wreckage could not be removed because they had to deal with a leak, and they were going to send something down from Augusta to deal with it,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Fire Department had a more active role because of the spill. The SFD dispatched two fire engines and its ladder truck, a typical emergency turnout.
Firefighters arrived to find the gasoline truck “on its side, leaking fuel,” said Statesboro Deputy Fire Chief Bobby Duggar.
“We arrived on scene and started doing the mitigation of confining it to the area, using some absorbents, figuring out where leak was coming from, trying to slow down the leak and keeping it from getting in anything like waterways, ditches,” he said. “That’s the first concern.”
Firefighters placed absorbent booms and pads on the ground to encircle the spilled gasoline and begin soaking it up.
The Fire Department is responsible only for this initial mitigation of the risk, not the cleanup, Duggar noted. The department notified the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, or EPD, and the company that owns the fuel truck.
That company and another firm it called on to remove the fuel from the overturned truck were handling the cleanup, he said.
Because of its position, the tank had to be tapped, he said. Personnel with a truck from the cleanup company were still removing the fuel from the overturned truck in midafternoon.
Full of fuel
The type of tank on the truck would hold in the range of 6,000 to 9,000 gallons, Duggar said, and he had been informed that it was full when the accident happened.
“The way it occurred, it kind of pushed that tanker truck over by the dirt beside the highway, and so the majority of the fuel, from what I’m being told by the responders on scene, was right there at the grass and dirt level, and so that helped a little bit,” he said. “Obviously, they’re going to have to come in and dig that dirt out and do the mitigation on the dirt.”
But the absorbent materials placed by firefighters stopped fuel from running into the highway, and the hazard was considered mitigated without the use of fire-retardant foam, he said.
Some firefighters and apparatus remained through the afternoon while the fuel was being transferred to the cleanup truck.
An operator at GSP Post 45, Statesboro, had referred the Statesboro Herald to the GSP’s statewide public information office in Atlanta. The reporter emailed a request for information on this accident shortly before noon but had received no reply as of 5 p.m.