A minor ammonia leak at the BASF plant on Amnicola turned-out to be a practice run for the haz-mat team and a major inconvenience for Chattanooga motorists.
The city engineering department is working on a way to avoid those traffic snarls in the future.
A small fire broke-out in a pump about 4:30 this morning at the BASF plant on Amnicola highway.
There was an anhydrous ammonia leak and that set into motion a familiar emergency procedure by employees..and by the Chattanooga fire department.
BRUCE GARNER, CHATTANOOGA FIRE DEPARTMENT "Its actually a perfect example..it turns out that we had a training exercises just for this type of emergency last April."
That exercise testing the fire department's reaction to an ammonia spill involved BASF and several other companies.
BRUCE GARNER "Its very important for them to do this right, you don't want to mess up when you're talking about hazardous materials. And that's why they shut off the roads.(BUMP) Everybody here understands how big a deal that is when you shut down roads like Amnicola highway."
The haz-mat team had the situation under control within 3 hours, but traffic was not back to normal until after 8 am.
Frustrated drivers were stuck before they knew what was happening.
The city of Chattanooga traffic engineering department is working on a program to avoid such traffic jams.
JOHN VAN WINKLE CITY TRAFFIC ENGINEER "We could have retimed the signals on highway 153, Hixson Pike, and so on..and help adjust to the traffic changes."
Using a series of grants, the traffic department is setting up a centrally located office that will monitor traffic patterns with cameras.
Traffic engineer John Van Winkle says that new grid-system will tie-in with the TDOT cameras.
JOHN VAN WINKLE "What we'll be able to do is team up with them. When we know of an incident..and we know where the congestion is..we'll have an emergency traffic control plan."
Van Winkle hopes that will be a reality in about 3 years.
Damage at BASF was minor and no one was hurt in the incident.
