Hazmat Crew Responds to Triethylamine Spill at University of Montana
A liter bottle of extremely flammable trietheylamine was accidentally dropped at the University of Montana today, September 18. According to Hazmat tech Jason Hedahl who was on the scene, the chemical is harmful if inhaled.
“Basically the bottle fell out of the fridge and it broke the bottle,” Hedahl said. “He did a good job of ventilating the room and then got out of the room so nobody else could go in. We knew what the chemical was and then we just took safety precautions as far as protective clothing and SCBA’s so we didn’t breathe anything in. Two of us went in.”
Hedahl says that by the time they arrived, the liquid had evaporated so it was mostly a glass clean up. The woman who was there when the accident occurred was checked for injury.
“The person that was in the room, she got out in a hurry,” Hedahl said. “She went through the steps of getting checked out medically and she tested fine, but other than that there was nobody else at risk. When we got in there, there was no liquid. It had evaporated. We had broken glass. We picked up the glass and exited the building.”
Around 40 or 50 people were evacuated from the third floor of the chemistry building after the accident occurred around 8:30 in the morning.