A major Gwinnett County intersection was closed for about 12 hours Tuesday after a gasoline tanker overturned and spilled about 3,000 gallons of fuel into a storm drain, officials said.
A hazmat team worked through the morning and afternoon to contain the fuel leak, which happened on Braselton Highway at Hamilton Mill Road near I-85 about 5:30 a.m. The fuel spill prompted evacuations at two gas stations and a day care. The Discovery Point Daycare and the nearby QuikTrip and BP stations remained closed during the cleanup efforts.
The intersection reopened at 5:43 p.m. The hazmat team metered the area throughout the day and never found readings that said residents were in danger, fire officials said.
The spill happened when a tanker truck rolled onto its side while making a turn, causing fuel to leak onto the road, Gwinnett fire spokesman Donald Strother told reporters at the scene. The vehicle was carrying about 8,500 gallons of fuel and about 3,000 of it spilled. The driver was not injured.
“There were two points of impact, what we will call ‘leak points’ on the tractor-trailer,” Strother said. “There was one at the actual top of the dome itself, and then there’s a second point of impact at the rear of the carriage unit.”
The hazmat team was called in when officials noticed the fuel was “rapidly leaking” into a nearby storm drain.
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
Credit: JOHN SPINK / JSPINK@AJC.COM
Equipment was put down to absorb the fuel to prevent more of it from spilling into the storm drain, officials said. However, some of it made its way into a pond at the Hamilton Mill Golf Club.
“Visible fuel is on top of the pond, with the fuel being lighter than water itself,” Strother said at one point.
The Gwinnett County Department of Water Resources worked with a cleanup crew and employees from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to determine how to remove the fuel from the pond and storm drain, officials said.
The cleanup effort took nearly 12 hours and involved siphoning the remaining 5,500 gallons of fuel from the tanker. Strother said fire officials drilled five holes in the truck to remove the remaining gasoline without spilling more of it.
The tanker truck remained on its side Tuesday night, but wreckers were standing by to right-side it and remove it from the intersection, Strother said.
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