New details emerge about hours leading up to rotten egg odor emitting from Paulsboro tanker
PAULSBORO, N.J. (CBS) -- New details have emerged about the hours leading up to a tanker, parked at a Paulsboro truck stop, releasing a foul odor that spread more than 50 miles into Burlington County and South Philadelphia last week.
The tanker, owned by TransChem USA, remained roped off in the parking lot of the TA Travel Center along I-295 and Berkley Road.
Gloucester County Emergency Management said TransChem USA is awaiting permits to move the tanker to a hazardous materials facility, and it expects the tanker to be moved in a few days.
TransChem USA's vice president of safety, Dave Edmondson, Jr. the driver was delivering the tanker to a nearby facility on Aug. 10.
"When he went to deliver, he was not on their schedule, so they turned him away," Edmondson said at the end of a Tuesday evening town hall. "At that point, he was instructed to go to the truck stop. That was at about 10 a.m."
Edmondson didn't say which facility the tanker was supposed to be delivered to nor how long it took the driver to reroute to the truck stop.
A little after 3 p.m., tanker driver Barry Adams heard a loud bang and saw the tanker venting what ended up being the foul odor.
"I've seen the driver briefly," Adams told Eyewitness News last Wednesday. "Why he come out and left again, I don't know. He shouldn't have never done that, but he did."
The odor is an additive to the hazardous chemical inside the tanker, Lubrizol 1389, that's akin to a rotten egg odor when natural gas is released into the air.
Edmondson said the driver was taking a break across the street.
"Once that reaction started, it's no longer safe to move the vessel," Edmondson said.
John Ross, an experienced tractor-trailer driver and an expert consultant for Evidence Solutions, said the tanker appears to have reacted properly to a build-up of pressure inside it by venting out the odor in gas form.
"It's common, especially when the atmosphere warms up," Ross said. "That hazardous material product you're transporting reaches its specific temperature where it starts expanding, it's going to happen, and you can't stop it from happening. And these trailers are designed like this, to where you don't burst at the seams."
But based on his experience transporting hazardous materials, what's not common is for the tanker not to be quickly moved to its destination once it starts venting an odor.
"I think that's very unusual," Ross said. "I would certainly get that product to its final destination just as soon and as safely as I possibly could."
TransChem USA didn't return multiple messages requesting a comment for this story.