Five people were killed and five were seriously injured after a truck overturned in central Illinois, causing a toxic substance to leak.
Five people were killed and five were seriously injured after a truck overturned in central Illinois, causing a toxic substance to leak from its cargo and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of area residents, authorities said Saturday.
“We have a lot of brave firemen, EMT, hazmat specialists, police officers that are working on this scene as we speak,” Effingham County Sheriff Paul Kuhns said at a Saturday morning news conference. The accident caused “a large plume, cloud of anhydrous ammonia on the roadway that caused terribly dangerous air conditions in the northeast area of Teutopolis,” Kuhns said. “Because of these conditions, the emergency responders had to wait. They had to mitigate the conditions before they could really get to work on it, and it was a fairly large area.”“The wind changed three or four different times on us,” said Tim McMahon, chief of the Teutopolis Fire Protection District.
Anhydrous ammonia is used by farmers to add nitrogen fertilizer to the soil, and it’s also used as a refrigerant in the cooling systems of large buildings such as warehouses and factories. According to the American Chemical Society, it is carried around the United States by pipeline, trucks and trains.
“It’s terrible. It’s bad stuff if you are involved in breathing it, especially because it gets in your airways, in your lungs and it burns,” Kuhns said.
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