My wife had a 3 gallon container of gasoline in the back (3rd row seat not up) of her Sequoia when she had to suddenly apply brakes causing the gas container to lunge forward and toppling over and the entire 3 gallons of gas spilled with most going under the 2nd row seats. My question is what to do immediately and more importantly how to handle the possibly toxic fumes and odor which continue to linger after several weeks.
If you are unable to remove the seats and carpet call around to detail shops and tell them your story . One of those should be able to clean and cancel the smell . If you can remove the seats you can try cleaning the carpets while still in the vehicle.
Open all the windows and let is air out for a very long time. NOT in the garage!! Outside.
Resign yourself to the smell of gasoline for a long time.
Why was your wife hauling gas inside the car? If she has to do that again, use a bungie cord to restrain the fuel jug so it won’t tip even if she hits the brakes hard or has to corner fast…
What have you done so far?
Assuming there’s padding under the carpet, I’d replace that, then I’d professionally clean the carpet.
Be very careful about using a wet/dry vac yourself to suck up the spilled gas. Gas fumes + hot electric vacuum motors can be a bad combination. This is one I would give to a professional, if only so that their liability insurance would kick in if something happened.
Also, get a new gas container. For almost the whole three gallons to spill, that indicates that yours does not close properly at all and shouldn’t be used. A proper container properly closed will maybe only dribble a few mL if you knock it on its side. The safety-cans won’t leak anything.
Wet/dry vacs don’t have explosion-proof motors.
BOOM!
Tester
I love bad audio mixing in small market TV news.
I knew a guy who loved to tell the story about his idiot friend in high school who decided to siphon gas from his parents’ car to use in his car. Got a mouthful of gas trying to siphon it the old-fashioned way and didn’t like it so he decided to work smarter dumber, not harder and use a canister vac. Boom!
As in NEVER DO THAT!
The youtube is from Titusville. And she is a young person not a retiree. Everyone has complained about the EPA gas cans that make it hard to use without spilling but I bought a couple new containers for my chain saws that I really like. You tip the can and push a button and the gas flows. Let up on the button and the gas stops. Simple as that. They were about $20 or more each but work great. OK for one gallon cans but wouldn’t work so well with a 5 gallon can because of the weight. Like this only the one gallon container.
Yeah, those are pretty good. Just don’t believe the auto-shutoff marketing. It will automatically shut off, but not fast enough to stop the gas from overflowing the tank.