Crews needed more than 12 hours to clean up 48,000 pounds of potentially explosive ammonium nitrate that was dumped on the highway just south of Festus when a tractor-trailer overturned Wednesday (May 13).
The truck turned over at about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday on the ramp from northbound Hwy. 67 to northbound I-55 south of Festus. All lanes of both highways were closed until 3:30 a.m. today (Thursday), creating a traffic tie-up that lasted through the rush hour on Wednesday.
Festus Police Chief Tim Lewis said both highways were closed in a one mile-radius of the crash site.
“It created a traffic nightmare,” Lewis said. “During rush hour, it was crazy. It got a little better later in the night.”
Festus Fire Chief Chuck Boyer said the tractor-trailer was carrying a powdery combination of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel that was headed from Bonne Terre to Indiana.
A similar explosive mixture was used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Boyer said the Oklahoma City bomb used about 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate.
“We had 48,000 pounds. You know what devastation happened to that building (in Oklahoma),” Boyer said. “This was a big issue.
“All this needed was an ignition source and the clover leaf probably would have been nothing but a big crater.”
The truck is owned by Explosive Contract Carriers Corp. of Bonne Terre. Police are investigating how the truck turned over.
“We’re not sure,” Lewis said. “He was at the top of the ramp. If he had been going too fast, he would not have been able to make it to the top of that ramp. So we’re not sure what happened.”
Boyer said the first few hours after the crash were spent locating a cleanup company that would agree to take on the job.
“The first ones we called didn’t want to handle it because of the material,” Boyer said. “We finally did get a company to come down and agree to clean it up.”
Fred Weber Quarries in Crystal City brought some heavy machinery to the scene to assist with the cleanup.
The cleanup company crews used plastic shovels to manually transfer the ammonium nitrate mixture into the bucket of a loader. The material was dumped into roll-off containers.
“All the product was taken to the Fred Weber rock quarry in Crystal City where they will dispose of it properly,” Boyer said.
Fred Weber is a customer of the Explosive Contract Carriers trucking company, which is why they were contacted to help, Boyer said.
Initially a vacuum truck was called in hopes of speeding up the process, Boyer said.
But the cleanup company, Environmental Restoration, opted not to use the vacuum truck for fear that static electricity might build up and spark an explosion.
Boyer said there already was enough danger from the machinery and people moving around the crash scene.
“We didn’t want anything else,” he said.
As an additional precaution, Boyer said, a water tanker task force was called in and staged at the Festus Home Depot parking lot.
“Because there were no hydrants close by, we needed to establish a water source,” Boyer said.
Six water tankers were standing by just in case.
“We had approximately 11,000 gallons of water if we had needed it,” Boyer said.
“We were very lucky with the outcome,” Boyer added.
The Festus and Crystal City fire departments, the Jefferson R-7 Fire Protection District and the Jefferson County hazmat team were on the scene. The Herculaneum Fire Department answered Festus fire calls during the incident.