Blue Canaries

Hazardous Material calls are potentially terrifying. They're like a real-life iocane powder which are colorless, odorless, and dissolve instantly in water. Unfortunately there are many nasties out there that have the potential to kill the unsuspecting. Firefighters often call police officers “blue canaries.” Back in the preindustrial days of mining, miners would carry a canary in a small cage with them. Canaries were more susceptible to the methane gas in the mine. If the canary died, it was time to get out. If the police officer drives right up to an accident and falls over unconscious, it’s time to put the HAZMAT protective equipment on.


I don’t know that dispatch training in HAZMAT calls is fantastic, but the emphasis on situational awareness is very good. Those situations in which people could be exposed to deadly chemicals are most often identified by dispatchers and mitigated before responders arrive on scene. Having this situational awareness, I have the tendency to overreact just a little. 


When working my Monday night at the Chevron station, there were always custodial duties to do at night. I had finished emptying garbages and was walking across the parking lot to clean the trucker showers. Truckers can be filthy, disgusting people, but the overwhelming majority of them are considerate and pick up after themselves. Cleaning the showers was far more pleasant than cleaning the restrooms used by the general public.


As I walked across the parking lot, I noticed white foam pouring out of the top of a tanker truck. It was oozing down the side of the truck trailer and pooling on the ground. There was already a fair amount under the trailer.


I panicked. I was only standing about thirty feet away from that foam. I couldn’t smell anything; I didn’t feel funny; I wasn’t light-headed; I couldn’t see a cloud of gas emanating from the pool. I backed away slowly (you know – like avoiding a bear) and then ran back into the store.


I quickly called 9-1-1 and told the call-taker, my good friend T* D*, that we had a HAZMAT spill at the Chevron. She asked all the right questions and told me she would send the responders.


I stayed in the store not wanting to risk further exposure. I started to feel bad for the driver of the truck. He probably was overcome by noxious fumes and died right there in the cab. I worried that the fumes might have spread to the other trucks and we may have a full-blown mass casualty incident. I went through a checklist in my mind of all the people that would have to be notified from the Sheriff to the Health Department.


A deputy’s truck sped past the pumps and I cautiously walked out the door to watch him. As if on cue, he ran right up to the cab of the truck and pounded on it standing just inches away from the edge of the pool of white foam.


“Hey!” he yelled. “Wake up!”


Emboldened by his lack of being dead, I inched closer to the spill. At last a groggy trucker opened the passenger door to his cab.


“Hey! You’re leaking something out of your truck! You’ve got to get out of there!” yelled the deputy.


“Uh, what?” replied the groggy trucker. A slightly less urgent explanation of the situation occurred with the driver still not seeming to understanding. At last he climbed out of the truck and realized what was happening.


“Uh, it’s just yogurt,” the driver offered. “It won’t hurt anything.”


Yogurt?!? How could yogurt come burbling up out of the top of a trailer that was shaped like it should be full of nerve agent?


The deputy keyed his radio and cancelled the other two rings of the circus. As he walked past me he mumbled something about gosh darn dispatch not knowing the difference between anhydrous ammonia and yogurt.