Stopped truck in bad spot
As a chemical engineer with experience in handling highly toxic and explosive chemicals, I am writing this letter for the good of the community. Stopping a truck at the state line slowly leaking trimethylamine in the middle of a populated metropolitan area was not the best decision by the people doing emergency management.
People should remember the railroad tank car that exploded south of Wenatchee on Aug. 6, 1974. Before the blast, a valve was reported to have been leaking, like the truck. Two people were killed, 60 injured, nearby buildings were collapsed, and shrapnel was found over a mile from the blast site.
Nearly all nitrogen-containing organic chemicals, particularly ammonia-based chemicals, are flammable and become explosively unstable when heated to higher than normal temperatures. It would have been far better to have escorted the truck to our extremely low populated wheat fields west of Fairchild Air Force Base. There, the valve could have been repaired without unnecessarily endangering the general public’s lives.
George Clark
Deer Park