Truck Accidents 360 Newswire

HAMSHIRE, TX – A truck accident Sunday morning, August 29, caused a hazardous chemical spill which will require a highway in Jefferson County, Texas to be closed for days. The collision between a semi tanker and a pickup truck also forced some area residents to evacuate their homes near the accident site on Interstate 10 near the city of Hamshire. The truck accident area is about 65 miles east of Houston in the southeast section of the state, about 86 miles northeast of Galveston, TX and about 81 miles southwest of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Early Sunday morning 30 year old Branden Swiney of Orange, TX was driving a semi tanker truck east on Interstate 10 in Jefferson County, TX. The tanker of the truck was carrying about 8,500 gallons of Isobutane, a hazardous chemical that can be extremely flammable. According to officials the chemical in the tanker was in both liquid and gas form. The chemical is toxic and can be deadly if inhaled and cause serious burns if it comes in contact with skin.

At around 3:30 a.m. as the semi tanker was driving through the area near the city of Hamshire the chemical truck collided with a pickup truck occupied by two people from Vidor, TX. After hitting the smaller vehicle the tanker truck rolled over on its side and the hazardous chemical began to spill out onto the roadway.

The driver, Mr. Swiney, suffered non life threatening injuries in the truck accident. He was treated and stabilized at the scene and then transported to Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital for additional treatment. The two occupants in the pickup truck were not injured in the truck accident.

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Texas State Troopers responded to the collision and closed down a section of Interstate 10 around the truck accident scene and conducted a reconstruction of the collision. Highway crews from the Texas State Department of Transportation were onsite to clear the wreckage.

Haz-mat teams from U.S. Environmental Services L.L.C were brought in to clean up the chemical spill and to offload the material that remained in the tanker after the truck accident. In the beginning they were able to drain the liquid through the truck’s valves. Once the level of Isobutane became too low to drain the teams were cautiously heating the remaining liquid to a gaseous state so that it could be burned off. By Monday afternoon the teams had contained about 60% of the chemical.

Due to the potentially dangerous chemical that was spilling from the tanker truck officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety decided to evacuate homes in the vicinity of the truck accident. About 68 residents of a nearby subdivision were taken to a Red Cross Shelter that was set up at the Hamshire Baptist Church.

Both directions of Interstate 10 were shut down between Farm Market 365 and Texas State Highway 73 while the different crews worked. Eastbound traffic was routed to State Highway 73 while westbound traffic was routed to FM 365. Officials expected the highway would be closed for several days while the toxic chemical was cleaned up, with some expecting the closure to last until Wednesday morning.

No charges have been made at this time and the tanker truck accident remains under investigation.

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