Black smoke billowing in the background, students at evacuated E. J. Gay School Monday afternoon as emergency responders worked to extinguish a fire in the cab of an 18-wheel tanker truck carrying 8,300 gallons of gasoline, Major Johnny Blanchard of the Iberville Sheriff's Office said.
The fire occurred just before 2:30 p.m. on Tenant Road about 150 yards from its intersection with La. 1, a sparsely-populated area except for the school, about 500 yards away from the scene, the major said. The Louisiana State Police, which sent its hazardous materials team, recommended evacuation.
No one was injured. Traffic on La. 1 was blocked for about two hours while three groups of firefighters used a foaming agent to extinguish the fire. Tenant Road (La. 992) was closed until after midnight while the gas was offloaded.
Blanchard said the fear was that the tanker and the gasoline, which might have been propane, would catch fire.
“Especially propane tanks, they'll travel through the air like a rocket,” he said.
A total of 408 children, attending the Iberville Math, Science and Arts Academy-West at E. J. Gay were evacuated to River Road, where school buses and parents picked them up, said Elvis J. Cavalier, head of the academy program. They were accompanied by 35 staff members and two parents who were visiting the school at the time.
“I was real proud of how all the children acted during the evacuation,” Cavalier said. “They were mature and realized the potential seriousness of the situation.”
Blanchard said he heard complaints from some parents that the children were walked out a mile away from the fire, but said “that was the safest way to get the students out without having the parents coming into the hot zone.”
They just need to understand that when something is going on, we will get the kids out safely,” he said. “The more of them coming in creates additional problems...Getting the kids away from there was the No. 1 concern of everybody.”
”We followed policy, did what we were supposed to do.” Cavalier said. “The children went to safety and that was the No. 1 priority, the safety of the kids.”
The driver had filled the tank at a nearby plant off Tenant Road, had safely gotten out when the cab caught fire and was standing a couple of hundred yards from the truck when responders arrived, Blanchard said. He said the driver told him trucks loaded at the plant were not allowed to travel Tenant to Belleview Road because of the denser population. Plaquemine High School, several neighborhoods and the former River West Medical Center are located in the area.
