Haz Mat Spill in Goldstream Park closes TCH

A major Hazardous Materials event on the Trans Canada Hwy through Goldstream Park shut down the only major route between Victoria and points up Island when a fully loaded B-train fuel tanker truck overturned and crashed into the rock face of the Malahat. The crash caused the majority of the contents of one trailer to spill. This dumped approximately 30,000 liters of gasoline onto the road and surrounding ditches. From here it travelled by culvert, under the highway and emptied into the Goldstream River where it worked its way down to Finlayson Arm. The original call came into Langford around 6:00 pm on Saturday. Sooke Fire Rescue Service offered containment boom from our large cache located on Whiffin Spit. This was quickly accepted and along with our Haz Mat trailer, an initial crew of four firefighters responded to the scene. With only one haz mat technician from Langford on scene, two of arriving Sooke Firefighters trained as Haz Mat Techs were put into action to do an overall scene assessment. So Chief Sorensen and Assistant Chief Barney went in with full protective gear and a camera to bring back information for the IC. We quickly determined that there were three tanks in each of the two trailers. Starting from the rear, Compartment 1 had the top dome missing and most of the contents were gone. Compartment 2 had broken the welds and the contents had spilled out, compartment 3 had a hole big enough to climb into from its impact into the rocks and was mostly empty. The next trailer was in better condition. Only the centre tank, containing diesel was leaking slightly. The other two compartments appeared to be intact. Once out of the hot zone, we reported back to IC and worked on a variety of plans. Decontamination zone was set up, booms were placed in the river and Colwood FD set up their big Foam monitor to apply class B foam to the entire scene. From there, it was a hurry up and wait as a variety of experts, provincial ministry personnel, fd peresonnel, truckers, crane operators, tow truck drivers, RCMP, commercial vehicle inspectors and many more all descended on the scene. It wasn't until 5 am the next morning that the initial crew made it home. (Besides the Chief and Assistant Chief, Captain Burket and FF Sutherland were on scene. Firefighter Norris-Jones joined us later as he was in the area. The next morning a relief crew was sent to Langford to assist with the decontamination, foaming of the area and providing protection as the RIT team during the unloading and righting process. Thanks to all those Sooke firefighters that volunteered to attend. Finally at 4:30 pm the second crew arrived home. The Malahat Drive was closed a total of 22 hours and many lessons were learned from this event that will be shared with the officers and senior staff of the DOS as well as other emergency response agencies. It was a miracle nobody was killed or seriously injured in this and from what the experts say, it was very unusual for this type of call not to result in a catastrophic fire.