Salisbury police, firefighters from both Eastern and Western Salisbury fire stations and members of the Lehigh County Special Operations unit responded to a Lehigh County 911 dispatch for an oil sheen appearing in the Trout Creek waterway about 3 p.m. Jan. 24.

First–on-the-scene firefighters began deploying oil absorbent booms along the creek to help contain the sheen emptying into the waterway from a stormwater culvert long in place as part of the township’s stormwater management infrastructure. Trout Creek runs along the property line between Harry S Truman Elementary School and the Paragon school bus depot along Gaskill Avenue, Allentown.

Investigators began tracing the path of the stormwater system and found the source of the spill several blocks away near a residence along Ueberroth Avenue, near Lehigh Avenue. Among debris from what appeared to be a home rehabilitation project, in a curbside U-Haul trailer, was a home heating oil storage tank leaking its contents into the trailer and along the road incline to a nearby stormwater grate.

Jonathan Al-Khal, training and operations coordinator for the Lehigh County Special Operations unit, said eight people under the command of John Kalynych, the unit’s coordinator, arrived in vehicles that included the unit’s command center. The vehicles carry technical rescue tools and large quantities of hazardous material cleanup supplies.

Firefighters and cleanup techs applied oil absorbent material around the trailer and along the spill path, while county technicians crawled into stormwater drainage culverts to trace the path of contaminants and attempt to mitigate the oil drainage.

The normal procedure in waterway spill incidents is to contact the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Pennsylvania Fish Commission; however, The Press was unable to confirm whether that had yet been completed.

A duck unfortunate enough to land in the oil sheen was captured and given a detergent rinse by Western Salisbury firefighter and animal rescue technician Darrell Singles, to remove oil from the bird’s contaminated feathers.

After the incident was cleared, Western Salisbury Fire Chief Joshua Wells said all firefighters whose boots and protective gear came into contact with the oil were being decontaminated to prevent further spread of the hazardous material to the environment.