Cleanup Effort After Tanker Overturned
When the tanker-truck overturned on the Orange Freeway on Sept. 19, it took eight hours to remove it and to restore traffic. At least seven of those hours were clear and dry.
Considering that there were no bombs or deadly poisons involved, this is an extraordinarily long time for a cleanup.
This gives me major concerns about our emergency services in general. When a major earthquake strikes, there will be dozens of overturned tanker-trucks on the freeways and worse.
At the rate the emergency services cleaned up the Sept. 19 accident, it would take them years to restore traffic after a major earthquake.
Can someone explain what the problem was? Orange County would appear to have lots of vacuum trucks to unload the tanker-truck. Orange County would appear to have dozens of heavy-duty tow trucks that could have put the tanker-truck back on its wheels.
What happened? Are we looking at another screw-up of the Exxon Valdez variety in which no one knew what to do or was willing to take responsibility or had the proper equipment available when an emergency struck?
RON GREIM
Orange
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