(TOP) Blacksburg Volunteer Fire Department Firefighter Cline Gore dons his protective gear to collect a sample of a liquid leaking from a tractortrailer that was hauling more than 90 barrels of hazardous waste Friday. (BOTTOM) Cherokee County Director of Emergency Preparedness Rick Peterson and Blacksburg Volunteer Fire Department Chief Clay Greer wait for a specialized chemical analysis computer to identify the substance. Blacksburg firefighter Cline Gore donned all of his protective gear and carefully collected a sample of a liquid dripping from a tractor-trailer that had stopped at a Blacksburg truck stop Friday.

The liquid was coming from one of the 90-some barrels of hazardous waste in the back of the trailer. Those barrels contained eight different kinds of hazardous materials.

The questions for Blacksburg firefighters and Emergency Preparedness Director Rick Peterson centered on what chemical they were dealing with and how they had to respond.

Luckily, they ultimately determined they didn't have to do much but wait for an environmental clean-up company to arrive and unload each of the barrels for them.

The situation began Friday morning at the busy Flying J truck stop off Exit 102 in Blacksburg. A tractor-trailer belonging to Clean Harbors Environmental Services hauling the load of hazardous waste from Pennsylvania to Texas, had stopped at the facility and the driver noticed something leaking near the front of the trailer, Peterson said.

Firefighters immediately covered the leaking liquid with a kitty litter-type material used to soak up liquids, and then the process began of figuring out what chemical was leaking.

Peterson said each truck has a manifest of its load, and this particular truck was carrying more than 90 55-gallon drums of waste. Luckily none were all that bad in terms of health hazards.

The most harmful of the materials in the trailer would have required an evacuation zone of just 150 feet, Peterson said.

Firefighters said the situation would have been much worse if other types of chemicals had been present.

Using a $50,000 chemical analyzer purchased in 2005 with Department of Homeland Security grants, Peterson had firefighters collect two samples of the leaking liquid so he could test them for identification.

The machine, which compares samples to a computerized library of every known hazardous material, identified nothing harmful during both tests.

Since the material was a waste product, Peterson said any hazardous chemicals could have been diluted to very low levels.

"It could be 30 percent or half a percent," he said.

Either way, though, Peterson said no one could take any chances.

Since the leaking drum was all the way at the front of the trailer, Peterson said an environmental clean-up company was being called in to remove everything from the trailer and clean up any spills.

"This is (still) a waste product," he said.

The clean-up was expected to take six to eight hours.

While the situation seemed rare, the chemical analyzer Peterson used to test the liquid gets frequent workouts. Peterson said it's used at least 10 to 20 times a year.