2.5 Gallons of Gasoline leaked in my trunk.. Help

Hindsite is always 20-20.

 

When loading my vehicles, I always keep in mind that occasionally there will be an unplanned emergency maneuver (full strength emergency braking, or a sharp evasive turn) that will tip or dump or spill any cargo that can be tipped or dumped or spilled. So always pack accordingly with anything that will cause a problem when overturned.

On the rare occasions of carrying a filled gas can in the car, it goes only on the rear seat floor, with either the front passenger seat pushed back to give it no tipping room, or other cargo packed around to secure it. The front seat floor is too big to be secure. Even when carrying portable fuel cans in the bed of dad's pickup truck, where a fuel spill is much less serious, they are either lashed to side bed tie points to prevent tipping, or otherwise secured to prevent or contain a spill.

Do you remember the old TV skit of a young new driver reflexively reaching his arm out to hold back the front seat passenger during a sudden stop, learned from watching his mother do that to him or to the grocery bags set on the front seat? My partner did that to me only a coupe times before I trained it out of her:
(1) anything that could get launched off the seat and dumped on the floor upside-down in a way that would cause a problem, should be loaded on the floor in the first place, in a way that it will stay right-side-up during such a maneuver;
(2) the driver is supposed to putting her entire attention on collision avoidance and controlling the car, with no distractions or constraints from having to protect the cargo. Any such distraction or constraint increases the likelihood of collision, which will guarantee damage to not just the cargo, but also to the car and possibly the occupants too.

Another example happened in my carpool on a day I skipped out. One carpooler was hauling a red berry pie for a work function, and placed it on the back seat of the other pooler's fairly new car. It spilled during the trip, and the stains were difficult to remove from the white fabric. Had it been my car, I would have insisted that it be placed on the floor mat.