HAZMAT and medic crews responded in central Iowa when a tanker truck carrying flammable gas rolled over. Des Moines fire department spokesman Brian O’Keefe says the call came in just before ten A.M. He says the truck, owned by Warren County Oil, was hauling about 2,000 gallons of propane. The driver, who escaped without injury, went onto the edge of the road where there’s realy no shoulder and as O’Keefe puts it “It just kind of sucked him off,” and the truck went into a shallow ditch and onto its side. Only a small amount of propane vapor leaked from “cross pipes” on the truck that were damaged. O’Keefe says HAZMAT responded because it was a 2-thousand-gallon propane tank, monitoring even though there turned out to be only a small release and no liquid propane spilled. There are fire and rescue crews with equipment stationed just a couple miles from the scene of that mishap, based at Des Moines International Airport in case of an air disaster or public-transportation emergency. The only time the airport fire equipment’s been called to a nearby emergency was during a large tanker fire, when the whole truck was fully engaged in flames. The airport firefighters have a foam truck they used to coat the tank, helping put out the fire and cool the tanker with the foam.
