| Disaster averted in fuel-tank fire |
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| Saturday, 08 September 2007 00:08 | |||
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'It could have killed a lot of people,' fire official says September 06, 2007By Alexa Jamesand Jeremiah Horrigan Times Herald-Record This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Poughkeepsie — It could have been bad — catastrophically bad. A fire inside a 4-million-gallon oil tank full of home heating oil on the shore of the Hudson River yesterday had the potential to either blow sky-high, rupture into the river, or both. Click READ MORE for the details But thanks to the work of Dutchess County firefighters and police, what might have made international news resulted in a handful of offices evacuated, delays on the Metro-North Railroad and no injuries at the Love/Effron Oil Co. on Poughkeepsie's south side. 'It could have killed a lot of people or caused huge environmental damage,'said Jeffrey Pells, deputy fire chief for the Arlington Fire Department. The crisis began Tuesday evening, when an oil barge crew was offloading oil into the giant greenish tank and noticed a leak, according to Pells. Offloading was stopped, but the tank was nearly full. Through the morning, crews were attempting to repair the 'weeping'leak when, according to Pells, either a spark from a welding torch or the heat resulting from the repair caused the fire inside the tank. Employees called the city's fire department at about 11:20 a.m., Pells said. A large plume of black smoke emanating from an observation port atop the tank was visible for miles, witnesses said. Heat from the fire buckled the sides and crown of the tank.'I heard a percussion: Boom!'said Patrick Delpino of Poughkeepsie, who was fishing on shore nearby. 'I didn't think anything of it at first. 'A fire rescue truck from Dutchess County Airport extinguished the fire with foam, Pells said. The foam was injected through an existing portal and floated atop the burning oil. Two and a half hours after the fire was reported, the blaze was declared 'effectively over.' Helicopters continued to circle the site, providing thermal testing of the tank as a precautionary measure. Metro-North stopped rail service from Beacon to the Poughkeepsie station, and the U.S. Coast Guard turned away boats from the area. Employees of Love/Effron and a nearby doctors office were evacuated from the scene. The tank sits on the shore at the end of Fox Street.Scott Mannain of Karl Mannain Excavating in Poughkeepsie was grabbing a bite nearby when he caught wind of the commotion. 'Can you imagine if 4 million gallons of fuel busted into our Hudson River? That would cause major devastation,'he said. 'If it was gasoline, it would have leveled the whole freaking thing — the whole hospital and everything.' Mannain drove his pickup truck as close as possible to the scene and spotted a pal who works for Love/Effron. When he heard the orders to evacuate, the employee said, 'I got the hell out of there.'
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