Firefighters clear spill at museum

The museum's water meter, with a close up of the guage below. Gisborne firefighters deftly handled a small spill of around 20ml of mercury yesterday. Picture supplied

FIREFIGHTERS were called to Tairawhiti Museum yesterday after a small quantity of mercury leaked from a 100-year-old water meter as it was being assembled in the collection store.

Fire and Emergency NZ sent a fire appliance and crew to the musuem just before 11am.

“An estimated 20 millilitres spilt on the floor of the collection and storage area of the musuem,” said acting area fire commander Ed Hindmarsh.

“It was deemed small enough and safe enough for us to deal with in our normal firefighting kit.”

The firefighters restricted access to the area and used a pipette to suck up the many small mercury droplets, which were put in a jar.

“We then used sulphur powder to cover the area where the spill occured and that enabled us to pick up the remaining mercury particles,” he said.

The fire crew were there for close to two hours dealing with the problem.

Museum director Eloise Wallace said two staff members were working on the water meter when the leak occurred.

“We have procedures in place to manage this type of incident and those procedures kicked in," she said.

“It happened well away from any public areas of the museum, so it was not deemed necessary to evacuate the building.

“We had some of the cruise passengers here at the time.”

Ms Wallace said Gisborne District Council donated the water meter to the museum.

“The staff were assembling it when the spill happened. Everyone did the right thing. My team were awesome and the firefighters did a great job.

“It all resolved itself without any further problems.”

No one was injured or affected. Mercury is a highly toxic chemical element that was commonly used in thermometers and other measuring devices.