Wreck spills 5,000 gallons of fuel in Lindale

Lindale—A multi-vehicle accident involving a tanker truck, and a truck trailer disrupted traffic through Lindal for about six hours. The accident occurred in front of Brookshires on SH 69 S between FM 16 and Eagle Spirit Dr. around 6 a.m. on Oct. 12. 

Lindale Police Chief Daniel Somes said a truck hauling a storage container crossed the south bound line markers and hit a pick-up truck. 

The pick-up took "evasive action" and was struck in the truck bed area. 

"The little truck got hit first. The truck hauling the storage unit caused [the accident], and then hit the diesel full of fuel, and thousands of gallons of diesel spilled," Somes said. 

The tanker truck was carrying 8,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and officials estimated that about 5,000 gallons spilled out. 

Two people were riding in the truck hauling the Conex box to be extricated from the vehicle. 

Four people, including the tanker driver, were taken to nearby hospitals. All four are expected to recover. Three people traveling in the pick-up truck were checked by EMS personnel and were not transported to a hospital. 

"The driver of the semi is at the hospital. The driver and female passenger of the truck hauling the Conex box are in the hospital. The only ones that didn't get hurt were all the people in the red pick-up," Somes said. 

The vehicles were removed, and traffic began to flow normally in the area by noon. 

The Lone Star Hazmat Response team and the Crow Wrecker team continued to survey and drain the area for several days following the incident. 

"Lone Star Hazmat, along with Crow Wrecker, are doing all the clean up," Somes said. "They will continue because all that fuel ended up going down into the creek. It didn't make it to the lake, but it's down in the creek, so now they're going to have to pull all that stuff up. That'll take days." 

“We shut down all the entrances to the schools. So school traffic was very backed up this morning, but everybody was patient,” Brent Chambers, a captain with the Lindale Police Department, said.  

“As a matter of fact, the Lindale and the School District Police Department sent a couple of people over, and they helped direct traffic, which made school traffic go a lot smoother. 

Several businesses, including Sonic, Brookshires, CVS, Scooter’s Coffee and Dairy Queen, were affected because customers could not access them. 

“I think everyone did well,” Chambers said. “We contained the scene until the fire department got there. Hazmat [took] care of the diesel that was spilled, and the Texas Department of Environmental Quality showed up.”