I had two factory sealed 5-gallon buckets of aluminum based roof sealant in my garage, and apparently one of them decided to have its own chemical reaction to itself! It internally heated and forced the sealed lid off with a loud POP, which attracted the attention of my wife, who then saw it start to smoke and bubble! She took it outside the garage and called the Fire Department, who arrived a couple of minutes after I did. None of them could find anything in their Hazmat manuals that would point to such a bizarre reaction - that stuff is suppoesd to be non-hazardous, but their "heat gun" indicated that the bucket was at least 150 degrees and we could see it boil. It boiled over into our driveway. The fumes were similar to paint thinner and very, very strong, so they evacuated us from the house and we had to stand outside down the street for several hours until it "finished its thing". All of the firemen and the guys from Hazmat said that they hve NO idea why this bucket decided to do this....it's supposedly not possible.
The EPA got involved, and I had visions of us having to pay thousands of bucks to clean this all up, (homeowners are regarded as the "responsible party"), but fortunately once it stopped bubbling it formed a solid. They told me that all I have to do is scrape it up with a shovel and drive it to the Household Hazardous Materials Dump site in Everett...which isn't open until Wednesday.
Anyone know how to get an Aluminum stain off of asphalt?
Anyhoo.....my dive gear from the club dive yesterday isn't getting rinsed off until this morning...having firetrucks and Hazmat vans in my driveway kinda put a damper on my "rinse plans" last night!
- John
