MOOSIC, Pa. — Crews are cleaning up after thousands of gallons of ammonia spilled inside a business in Lackawanna County.
It happened Monday morning at Fresh N Lean, a factory along Birney Avenue that makes prepared foods for schools and other facilities.
The Greenwood Hose Company fire chief tells us that an 8,000-gallon ammonia tank inside began to leak on Monday morning.
At least half a dozen fire departments responded to the leak.
Lackawanna County Emergency Management was called in. They took air quality readings and found that the leak had only minimally contaminated the air.
Officials said 14 employees were taken to the hospital to be checked out, most complaining of respiratory problems and dizziness.
Thomas Taylor, the director of EMA, says this could have been much worse and that this event functioned as an exercise in ensuring their system of response works.
Lackawanna County has a volunteer decontamination unit that was deployed, and everything went smoothly. Two workers were decontaminated before going to the hospital.
"Fortunately, the big decon tent wasn't needed. We were able to gross decon those two people in a portable decon unit," Taylor said. "The system did work. All the units that needed to be here were here. We had several meters in operation. Everything turned out safe in the end."
Workers were able to go back into the business Monday afternoon.
Traffic on Birney Avenue was down to one lane near the plant.