Acid Cloud Rises From Truck Leak

About 1,000 gallons of diluted hydrochloric acid spilled early Wednesday from a tanker truck parked at an oil industry service company on North Ventura Avenue, closing off the road and keeping local residents indoors for most of the day.

The spill, which was detected by workers at a neighboring business just before 6 a.m., caused a white vapor cloud to waft over B. J. Services on the 2500 block of North Ventura Avenue, where the tanker truck was parked. The cloud also drifted close to nearby homes for most of the morning.

No one was injured, but emergency crews kept the area sealed off and residents indoors while hazardous-materials response teams plugged the leak.

The acid was not concentrated enough to pose any threat greater than burning eyes and shortness of breath, officials said. Still, if weather conditions had shifted and the cloud had settled on nearby homes, officials were prepared to evacuate up to 1,500 residents.

Ventura Avenue was closed from Stanley Avenue to Shell Road for more than 10 hours while the crews worked to clean up the spill. It could be late today before the process is complete, officials said.

About 25 businesses were closed for the day Wednesday, and about 40 youths were evacuated from Teen Challenge, a program for at-risk young people located two blocks from the plant, said Assistant Chief Rick Achea of the Ventura Fire Department, which was handling the spill.

Jim Frost, a 20-year-old employee of Pool California Energy Services next to the spill site, said he and a co-worker saw the vapor cloud a little after 5 a.m. and called the Fire Department.

“We were just getting to work and we saw the cloud,” Frost said. “We work with this kind of stuff all the time, and right away we knew it was some kind of acid. You could taste it in the air.”

The 35% hydrochloric acid solution that spilled is used as an industrial cleaner for oil-drilling equipment and is highly corrosive, said Jim Glew, a Ventura Fire Department spokesman.

“It can cause a person’s eyes to burn and give them trouble breathing,” Glew said.

The 2,500-gallon tanker apparently sprung two leaks overnight, spilling about 1,000 gallons onto a concrete pad where the truck was parked behind the B. J. Services office building.

The acid pooled on the ground and, reacting with moisture in the air, created the vapor cloud, Glew said. It wasn’t known Wednesday what caused the leaks.

B. J. Services does high-pressure pumping for the oil and gas industry, said Rick Pierucci, the firm’s regional manager. Pierucci said it was the first spill he was aware of in the plant’s 40-year history.

“At least since I’ve been working for the company, and that’s 15 years,” said Pierucci, who was coordinating the company’s emergency response at the scene.

“We’re working very closely with the Fire Department to get this cleaned up,” he said.

About 50 firefighters worked with hazardous-materials response teams from the Ventura Fire Department, the Oxnard Fire Department, the Port Hueneme Navy Construction Battalion base and the county Fire Department.

Using protective gear that resembled spacesuits, two firefighters were able to work in the vapor cloud for 30 minutes at a time.

Each pair of firefighters were backed up by two team members in case they needed to be pulled out. When they returned from working in the hazardous area, the firefighters were hosed down in a chemical bath built at the scene.

After the leaks were plugged and the team was able to contain the spill, another team from a private company hired by B. J. Services and supervised by the county’s Environmental Health Division got to work cleaning up the material.

“We’ll be spreading either soda ash or lime onto the spill to neutralize the acid,” said Craig Cooper, a specialist with the division.

Although residents were allowed to leave, they were not permitted to return to their homes, causing a traffic jam at Stanley and Ventura avenues as people tried to get home or go to work.

“We heard all the fire engines this morning, heard there was a spill and decided to leave,” said Clinton Dingman, 37, who lives two blocks from the spill site.

Dingman parked his truck by a roadblock on Ventura Avenue and waited with his 2-year-old son Chance, his sister-in-law and half a dozen other residents while Ventura police officers directed traffic away from the scene.

One officer told Dingman it would be after 4 p.m. before residents would be allowed to return home.

“I guess we’ll go to the beach then,” he said.

The Red Cross set up an evacuation center at the Westpark Community Center for residents who were stranded by the spill.

Correspondent Andrew D. Blechman contributed to this story.