A fire involving an oil truck which sent smoke wafting over a Roncesvalles neighbourhood early Sunday morning did not involve fuel leaks into nearby sewers, the Ministry of the Environment and the Toronto fire department said.
"There were no environmental impacts and site clean up was completed on (Sunday) January 12. The tanker, which contained heating oil, was not affected by the fire," ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler wrote in an email.
The truck — which was located at Dundas St. W. and Roncesvalles Avenue — was leaking fuel, and when mixed with water from fire hoses it came to a total of about 100 litres of fluid, all of which was contained at four nearby catch basins, he wrote.
"So what we had was a tanker truck that was on fire, and crews cooled the tank while trying to extinguish the fire at the same time," said Toronto fire department spokesperson Bill Papakonstantinou.
He explained the process of mitigating environmental damage involves stopping leakage into sewers and waterways.
"If it's any kind of fire that has some kind of liquid, what we will do is mitigate any environmental issue by covering all the manholes and sewers, notifying the Ministry of the Environment, and then trying to block any leakage into the sewers or waterways around, and then we'll come in with a vacuum truck and suck up everything that we've blocked," Papakonstantinou said.
"So we use sand and absorb all and other methods to pull this liquid, whatever it is, so we can then later suck it up without it getting into the sewers in the waterways. In this case, there was no actual leak of fuel."
The fire was at 2145 Dundas St. W., the location of Lambert Oil, a fuel delivery company. They did not respond to a request for information.
