VIDEO: Thursday evening, the Weatherford Police Department said around 500 people were evacuated from town, and five firefighters sustained chemical burns in their airways, following an anhydrous ammonia leak. Authorities say the leak originated from a tanker truck parked behind the Holiday Inn Express near Main Street in Weatherford. Residents were cleared to return home Thursday morning after being evacuated Wednesday night.
Rachael Merchant, an evacuee in a neighborhood near Washington Street and Davis Avenue, told News 4 she and her family left their homes around 12:15 a.m. Shortly after evacuating, Merchant said she started to feel sick from the toxic fumes in the air.
“It started out with just tightness of the chest, hard to breathe, a little bit of eye burning, nothing too chaotic and crazy, but it feels more like you have bronchitis,” Merchant said. Another neighbor, Brayden Mowles, said his family left at approximately 10:00 p.m., and he later left town after receiving the evacuation call at work. Firefighters and several agencies responded with an “all hands on deck” approach.
