Driver, Procedural Faults Cited in Gas Station Blast

The National Transportation Safety Board has concluded that a fuel truck driver’s failure to follow proper safety procedures was the primary cause of a gasoline fire that killed five people and injured one in August 1998 at a convenience store on U.S. Route 90 in Biloxi, Miss.

The board said its year-long investigation of the incident uncovered deficiencies in the training and incident-reporting requirements for the transportation of hazardous materials and appealed to federal regulators to fix the omissions.

The NTSB said in a report made public Sept. 21 that trucker Bruce Jordan, who was living in Gulfport, Miss., at the time of the incident, did not determine how much gasoline was in the underground tanks at the store and did not closely monitor the loading process. The board blamed Jordan’s employer, Premium Tank Lines of Jackson, Miss., for failing to properly instruct him in the procedures for loading and unloading.

The report also said that Jordan failed to tell Premium that he had been fired from a previous truck-driving job and that he had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, facts the NTSB said Premium would have known had an adequate check been made into the driver’s background.

For the full story, see the Sept. 27 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.