October 13, 2019 Your Neighborhood — Your News®
Month xx–xx, 2019
LOCAL
CLASSIFIEDS
PAG E 19
The tanker truck that spilled gas on the border of Park Slope and Gowanus. Photo by Rose Adams
GOWANUS OIL SPILL
Tanker truck spews thousands of gallons of gas following collision in Gowanus
BY ROSE ADAMS
A tanker truck spilled thousands
of gallons of oil onto
Warren Street and Fourth Avenue
after smashing into a cement
barrier Saturday afternoon.
“Oil started spilling out
like crazy,” said Troy Gilberti,
who saw the incident while he
was walking with his daughter,
Faith. “It was like a waterfall.”
The truck was turning from
Fourth Avenue onto Warren
Street at around noon when
it clipped a cement divider,
which punctured the truck’s
tank, according to authorities.
Tankers of that size hold a
maximum 3,000 gallons of gasoline,
and a firefighter at the
scene claimed the rupture had
nearly emptied it.
More than a 60 firefighters
and hazardous materials experts
responded to the scene,
closing off the surrounding
blocks and using vacuums to
collect the spill off the street,
although some of it cascaded
into nearby sewers.
The incident caused no injuries,
according to a firefighter.
A spokesman for the Department
of Environmental
Protection, Edward Timbers,
claimed that the spill made its
way into nearby man holes and
an adjacent construction site,
and that the trucking company
hired an environmental
cleanup company to cleanup
the remaining fuel.
None of the oil made its way
into the Gowanus Canal, Timbers
said.
Motorist
kills kid
Driver strikes
10-year-old
cyclist
BY AIDAN GRAHAM
An unlicensed driver struck
and killed a 10-year-old boy in
Kensington on Saturday morning.
The driver of a 2002 Ford SUV
was turning left off Seton Place
onto Foster Avenue when he
struck Dalerjon Shahobiddinov
at 10:33 am, hitting the boy as he
cycled in the crosswalk, according
to police.
First responders rushed the
child to Maimonides Medical Center,
where he was pronounced
dead, according to authorities.
Cops arrested the 29-year-old
motorist at the scene on charges
of failing to yield to a bicyclist, operating
a motor vehicle without a
license, and failing to exercise due
care, according to authorities.
The tragic accident occurred
just steps from the boy’s home
on Foster Avenue between Seton
Place and E. Fifth Street, according
to police.
Shahobiddinov’s death marks
the 24th bicyclist killed on city
streets this year — far outpacing
the 10 cyclists slain throughout all
of 2018 — which a spokesman for
advocacy group Transportation
Alternatives described as a “preventable
public health crisis” in
calling for additional street-safety
measures.
“We press members of the New
York City Council, and especially
those in Brooklyn, which has seen
the most bicyclist deaths this year,
to pass Speaker Corey Johnson’s
Streets Master Plan bill, which
Continued on page 18
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