Staff | Las Vegas Now

A truck carrying 30,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate tipped over early Wednesday morning at the intersection of Charleston and Lamb. About 5,000 pounds of the chemical spilled over.

Ammonium nitrate is often used as fertilizer, but in certain combination's it can be explosive. In fact, it's what Timothy McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Hazmat crews were on the scene for several hours, but everything is now cleaned up.

The driver of the truck was transporting the vehicle with the chemicals to a jobsite in Glendale, Nevada. The truck was hauling diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate. Hazmat crews were quick to separate the two chemicals to prevent an explosion. They got that done fairly quickly, but kept people out of the area during the cleanup process.

"That didn't prevent possibility of someone coming along throwing out a cigarette. I don't know if that's enough heat to ignite it, but we weren't going to take that chance. That's why we have a 1,000 foot perimeter. This was material similar to cause the Oklahoma City bombing and we didn't want to take that chance," said Tim Szymanski with the Las Vegas Fire Department.

The driver has been given two citations in the crash. He was not injured.

School administrators at nearby William Snyder Elementary say they there will be no outdoor activity for students because of safety precautions. Dozens of residents and people working nearby had to get out of the area. Many of them were supposed to go to a nearby middle school.

Metro and the fire department told people to come to Jerome Mack Middle School, but most of them chose not to.

Police and firefighters evacuated homes and apartments within a 1,000 foot radius of the accident, but because so many roads were blocked off, some residents were forced to walk out of their homes and stay outside.

Dawn Woods was upset that no one came to her door to warn her about the incident when she and her two sons live right across the street from where it happened, "I pay taxpayer money just like everybody else does and as far as I'm concerned, they didn't earn their pay today. They really didn't. Because if I've got something like that right outside my front door and they can't even give us the decency of letting anybody know what's going on."

Woods said most of her neighbors just stayed in their homes because they didn't want to leave.

Mack Middle School was on standby all morning, reserving its gym for evacuees even though many of their students have testing today. The Red Cross also set up a makeshift shelter at the gym.