Quick work by a truck driver and emergency responders Monday afternoon prevented a spill downtown of about 20 gallons of diesel from becoming worse.
Matt Klym, driver for Hicks Transportation of Albany, Oregon, was pulling his Peterbilt 18-wheeler out of the parking lot of cold-storage facility, Lineage Logistics, when one of the rig’s fuel tanks scraped a bump in the pavement and lost the tank’s drain plug.
“I heard it drag and I’m like, ‘Oh, no,’” Klym said from the scene Monday at the corner of Columbia and Kittitas streets. “I opened the door and smelled diesel.”
Klym grabbed a rubber glove and tried to plug the tank’s approximately 2-inch drain hole, and used buckets to catch much of the spill.