We recently had a tractor trailer fire. Here is my question: After an hour of battling the blaze the truck driver admits that the trailer is full of auto parts and other stuff, and by the way, a 55 gallon barrel of phosphoric acid. By the time the Hazmat team arrived the levels were not high enough to raise any concern. If command was notified immediatly of the contents in the trailer would the levels initially been a concern? What would you do?
The driver, in fact, was asked, no his truck was not placarded. He had no shipping papers that were disclosed. The first unit arrived and kept distance from the trailer and started attacking the blaze. Everyone was wearing an SCBA except one. When the driver disclosed the contents, IC consulted the ERG and called in the nearest Hazmat team. There was runoff that was handled, the only problem is that the company called in to clean-up the mess never showed and MODOT ended up cleaning up the DCON tanks.