A truck carrying liquid nitrogen rolled over in Rockport on Wednesday morning, prompting a temporary road closure, as authorities provide scant details.
The Rockport Fire Department announced via Facebook on Wednesday morning that a portion of Route 17, between the intersections with Route 90 and Meadow Street, would be closed for “an extended period of time.”
The Fire Department included no additional details, and the Rockport Police Department did not issue its own statement on the closure.
According to the Pen Bay Pilot, the closure was prompted by an 18-wheeler single-vehicle rollover crash that took place around 6:30 a.m..
They reported that the driver was the vehicle’s sole occupant and was able to extricate himself from the crash.
Strangely, the outlet reported that the driver initially claimed to be uninjured and refused medical treatment; however, approximately 90 minutes later, he was transported to a hospital for treatment.
The extent of the driver’s injuries is not clear.
The Pen Bay Pilot reported that the truck was hauling a full tank of liquid nitrogen.
The fire department reportedly inspected the truck and found no leaks. Nevertheless, liquid nitrogen is considered hazardous material, and the road needed to be closed down until a representative of the Sanford-based company that sent the nitrogen could inspect the crash.
The truck was reportedly en route to Fisher Engineering in Rockland at the time of the crash.
Neither the Pen Bay Pilot article nor the fire department’s press release named the driver or indicated a cause of the crash.
The Maine Wire reached out to the Rockport Police Department and Fire Department, along with town officials, asking for more information, including the name of the driver and the cause of the crash, but they did not immediately respond.
:” liquid nitrogen is considered hazardous material”. Nitrogen is an inert gas and is most of what we breath:
“The composition of air by volume is approximately 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, and 0.04% carbon dioxide, along with trace amounts of other gases.”
The possible hazard is that liquid nitrogen will be very cold but if it is contained in the tank, no one is going to die from frost bite.
Another illegal with a drivers license, which they use to vote
Liquid Nitrogen is a HazMat — it’s UN number is 1977 and that number should appear on the truck. There are three concerns with it.
First, it boils at -320°F, and hence any spill of the liquid will instantly become a much larger cloud of gas. While nitrogen itself is not toxic, it represents about 70% of the air, it will displace air and hence oxygen.
In other words, had that tank split open anyone standing in the immediate area with suffocate from the lack of oxygen — unless they had their own air supply like the firefighters would’ve had. That’s why they shut the road down, they didn’t know that they weren’t invisible pockets of deadly pure, nitrogen, gas drifting around until they checked with electronic sniffer.
The second concern is that if a small amount of liquid is in a confined container, it can become a bomb — without some means of venting the pressure, it will build up to the point where the container traumatically fails and pops like a balloon. A metal balloon with jagged pieces of sharp metal flying through the air at high speed.— not fun…
The third concern of course, is that -320°F and will freeze anything. It comes to contact with including human skin. But the other two concerns are more pressing when you have a tank truck rolled over.
shutting down the road was the right thing to do
To legally operate this vehicle, one would need a CDL license, a tank endorsement, and a hazmat endorsement. The tank endorsement is a written test
Post 911, the hazmat endorsement requires a homeland security background check with fingerprints. It cost the 50 or $100, I forget which, and I don’t even know what a check but theoretically they make sure that you’re not an illegal alien. Theoretically.
So if the driver was properly licensed, there’s a fairly good chance he has legal status here. On the other hand, that’s assuming the company that owned the truck actually checks out its drivers which doesn’t always happen.