The smell of gasoline is still very strong Thursday night in Bourne, Massachusetts, even 36 hours after a tanker truck rollover spilled 5,000 gallons of fuel.
With heavy rains, there was a stoppage in the cleanup for the night. But crews will be working again tomorrow and for the next week.
Gasoline-filled dirt was moved out from the Bourne Rotary into water-tight liners, and to the landfill, then the lab to be tested.
The company is on the hook to pay for the cleanup. While serious injury was fortunately averted, a major mess was not.
"It's a big job because we're trying to get everything done and everything out fast," said Jim Connolly, senior project manager with TMC Environmental, the company doing the cleanup.
One of only two entrances to the Cape is a traffic quagmire on this day, with one lane shut down.
Aside from the fog, the backup on the Bourne Bridge resembles summer.
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Crews in the rotary are digging three to five feet down, even up to 10 feet in some spots, to get the soil out and tarp over what's left.
As one would imagine, on the Cape, below the loam is gas-soaked sand.
"Unlike diesel oil and stuff that'll stick around for decades, gasoline won't go as deep as oil," Connolly said.
It'll take about another week to clean up the ground. A closer look reveals some of the 5,000 gallons made their way down storm drains and into the Cape Cod canal.
Booms are set up to prevent it from spreading, but they're soaked in gas, so a team from the non-profit Water Defense is assisting to test water with some unique eel grass like tools.
How bad is the contamination in the water? Cleanup crews don't think it will have a major environmental impact. But Onset Harbor is one of eight shellfishing areas that is closed as a result.
