15/09/11 - Large gas leak at Port Botany
Published: 15th September 2011
Last night, Wednesday 14 september, at around 10.30pm fire crews were called to reports of a large Liquified Petroleum (LP) gas leak at the Elgas LPG loading terminal and storage facility at Port Botany.
A large marine tanker was in the process of transferring a load of LP gas to a shore based storage tank when a leak occurred in a relief valve on the transfer pipework. Between 5 and 20 tonnes of LP gas was in the pipework at the time of the incident. Forty firefighters from eight surrounding stations attended the incident and maintained constant water sprays onto the leak to dissipate the gas cloud as the many tonnes of gas were allowed to escape.
A two hundred metre exclusion zone was established around the site, sixty workers were evacuated and friendship Road was closed to all traffic. Hazmat crews constantly monitored the surrounding area. Several sections of the Port Botany facility were closed down during the operation.
The area was declared safe at 2.12am this morning and all evacuated people were allowed to return. No injuries were reported and an investigation by Elgas will be conducted into the cause of the incident.