Tennessee
Cool Springs Target reopens after chemical
scare
Target Cool Springs was evacuated at 12:40 this
afternoon and closed briefly as a precaution after several employees
reported feeling ill after being exposed to a chemical. while unpacking
merchandise in the stock room area, according to Franklin Fire Deputy
Chief Mike Culberson.
The
employees were unpacking merchandise in the stock room area at the time,
according to Franklin Fire Deputy Chief Mike Culberson.
The
Hazmat team from the Franklin Fire Department, Franklin Police,
Williamson County EMS and Williamson County Emergency Management
Association responded.
More than 10 employees were evaluated at the scene by
emergency medical responders but all refused medical treatment and no
one was transported to the hospital.
Culberson
said preliminary testing of the substance indicate it is a pesticide. He
said the exposure occurred in an isolated area and all materials were
removed from the store.
The store has re-opened for business.
===
Chemical
leak at O'Hare, no evacuations
Comments
January
25, 2010
SUN-TIMES MEDIA
WIRE
Emergency crews are
responding to a chemical leak at O=92Hare Airport Monday
night.
Fire crews arrived to Terminal 2 of O=92Hare Airport
at about 7 p.m. and remained on the scene as of 7:35 p.m., Department of
Aviation spokeswoman Karen Pride said.
The leak
is on the field side of the airport, which means it is outside and
requires no evacuations of the terminal, Fire Media Affairs spokesman
Quention Curtis.
The pinhole-size leak is actually of hydrazine, a
chemical that has an ammonia-like odor used in heating systems, Fire
Media Affairs Director Larry Langford said. The minor leak is in a water
line on the ground level of the F gates in Terminal 2.
One
person complained of pain but refused medical treatment, Curtis
said.
===
City investigates chemical containers found near
school, retirement home
By
Magdalene Perez, The Stamford Advocate, Conn.
Jan.
26--STAMFORD -- City officials are investigating the discovery of
potentially hazardous materials on the property of Scofield Magnet
Middle School and the nearby Scofield Manor retirement
facility.
Turn of River firefighters and a state Department of
Environmental Protection official responded to the locations Saturday
after a North Stamford resident reported finding a rusted 55-gallon
barrel north of Scofield Magnet Middle School. Later that day, area
residents led officials to nearby Scofield Manor, where they found a
5-pound bag of a banned pesticide and other chemical containers,
according to witnesses.
City officials said they are treating the materials as
hazardous and have enlisted an environmental consultant to investigate
the barrels' contents. City officials planned to begin testing the
contents Monday, but heavy rain prevented further investigation, they
said. The investigation is expected to continue Tuesday morning,
according to city Operations Director Ernie Orgera.
"They
went out there and inspected and found (the drums) could potentially
contain some unknown chemicals," Turn of River Fire Chief Frank
Jacobellis said. "Initially there's going to be testing, and if the DEP
discovers there are some chemical issues, then there's going to be a
cleanup effort. Then DEP will try to figure out who's
responsible."
The discoveries came amid rising concern among
neighboring residents about chemical drums found in Scofieldtown Park, a
former industrial dump located across the street from both the school
and retirement home. Last week, residents gathered at the park to demand
the city move forward with plans to remediate the landfill. They said
they found 28 chemical drums, some rusted remnants, on the grounds. City
officials had planned to scout the property Monday, but that effort was
also canceled due to rain.
...edited for length...
===
Chemical Bombs Explode at Clovis
Playground
Tuesday, January 26,
2010
Amanda
Perez
More: Bio, News Team
CLOVIS, Calif. (KFSN) -- A Clovis neighborhood is on
edge after three teenagers set off homemade bombs at a playground. It
happened at a neighborhood park near Keats and Magnolia. Clovis Police
have been called to the neighborhood park twice now, where they've found
plastic bottles blown apart.
Sunday evening, neighbors called police after they saw
teens at the park and heard several loud blasts. "It sounded like
gunshots! I heard the first one inside, I got up to investigate, and the
minute I opened the front door, another one went off," said neighborhood
resident David McEwen.
"We could see the bottles pop up, but we never saw the
kids. They took off. Then, everybody came out, and it was like, "hey,
what happened?" said neighborhood resident Joe
Gutierrez.
A few people told police they've heard other
explosions in the neighborhood before but they've never thought twice.
Police believe the teens are probably finding bomb making "recipes" on
the internet. "Apparently, it smelled like bleach. I don't know that
they've done any chemical analysis, but that's what it smelled like, so
that was probably one of those ingredients," said Clovis Police
Department Spokesperson Janet Stoll-Lee.
Police
said the teens could face charges but there is also a fear they could
hurt themselves or others, especially because they may have left the
bombs unattended in a spot that's popular with young children. "They
could have blown their own hand off, with what I heard," said
McEwen.
Gutierrez is worried about what else the kids might
use to experiment. "You don't know what they're going to do next. That's
the bad part about it, if they're willing to do this ... What's next?
That can get scary," said Gutierrez.
Clovis Police are asking
parents to be aware of what their teens are doing on the internet and
around the house because many of the devices can be made with cleaning
liquids and tablets. If you see any suspicious activity around your
neighborhood you are urged to call police.
===
DuPont identifies plant
worker who died: Man was exposed to a poisonous gas from a ruptured
hose
Jan 26, 2010 (Charleston Daily Mail -
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Carl "Dan" Fish of Gallagher, a
32-year DuPont employee who worked as an operator at the company's Belle
plant, died late Sunday night after being exposed to phosgene at the
plant on Saturday, the company said.
"We are deeply saddened that
one of our Belle teammates passed away," Bill Menke, Belle plant
manager, said in a prepared statement released Monday. "Our thoughts and
prayers are with his family at this time."
Fish, 58,
was "a dedicated employee, a good fellow, a teammate and a friend,"
Menke said. "The whole site is hurting right now."
Fish was
an integral part of the Belle plant's Site Emergency Response team for
much of his career, the company said.
Kanawha
County Commission President Kent Carper said, "I know he has been a
significant contributing member to the search-and-rescue community --
the K-9 Rescue Unit -- here in Kanawha County."
Carper
called Fish's death "a terrible tragedy" and said, "Our thoughts and
prayers are with the Fish family and, for that matter, the extended
DuPont family."
DuPont said it would make employee assistance
counselors available at the Belle site.
The
Kanawha County Emergency Ambulance Authority had transported Fish to the
Charleston Area Medical Center's General Division after he was exposed
to phosgene from a leaking transfer hose.
At room
temperature, phosgene is a poisonous gas, according to the Centers for
Disease Control. It may be colorless or appear as a white to pale yellow
cloud.
"Phosgene was used extensively during World War I as a
choking (pulmonary) agent," the centers said. "Among the chemicals used
in the war, phosgene was responsible for the large majority of
deaths."
With cooling and pressure, phosgene can be converted
into a liquid so it can be shipped and stored. "When liquid phosgene is
released, it quickly turns into a gas that stays close to the ground and
spreads rapidly," according to the centers.
In low
concentrations, phosgene "has a pleasant odor of newly mown hay or green
corn, but its odor may not be noticed by all people exposed," according
to the centers.
A knowledgeable source said that Fish's first exams
"came back perfectly clean," and doctors were thinking about dismissing
him.
But according to the Centers for Disease Control,
exposure may cause delayed effects that may not be apparent for up to 48
hours, even if the person feels better or appears well following removal
from exposure. Therefore, people who have been exposed to phosgene
should be monitored for 48 hours afterward, according to the
centers.
No one knew the extent of Fish's exposure and it was
decided that he should remain under observation. "Some hours later, they
started to see some symptoms," the source said.
Exposure
can result in severe respiratory effects, severe eye irritation, skin
burns and death. No antidote exists for phosgene. Fish, who had been
transported to the hospital in early afternoon on Saturday, died late
Sunday.
Phosgene is used as a chemical intermediate to make
plastics and pesticides. "We use it as a feedstock to some of our crop
protection chemicals," Menke said.
The phosgene incident is one
of four incidents that reportedly occurred at the Belle plant in a very
short period of time, Carper said. The other incidents are as
follows:
--On Friday evening, operators at Belle told Metro 911
that earlier in the day they discovered a rupture disc had blown in one
of the production units allowing methyl chloride vapor to be released to
the atmosphere. Plant personnel determined that the disc may have blown
prior to the startup of the facility five days earlier and that up to
1,900 pounds of methyl chloride may have been vented to the
atmosphere.
Methyl chloride is a colorless, poisonous gas used as
a refrigerant and local anesthetic. It also is used in the manufacture
of silicones, antiknock fuel additives, the production of butyl rubber,
and fungicides and pesticides. "It's a reaction product of one of our
crop-protection chemical processes," Menke said. "It goes through a
thermal oxidizer to destroy it."
--A fume alert sounded at
7:45 a.m. Saturday as a result of a sulfuric acid leak in the spent acid
recovery process. Site operations personnel determined that less than 20
pounds of sulfuric acid escaped into the environment.
--A power
cord shorted to an outside lighting fixture and was de-energized. "There
was never a fire, never a hazard to anyone," Menke
said.
None of the incidents were related, Menke said.
"They're all separate events."
DuPont notified Metro 911 on
Saturday that the Belle plant was shutting down. At first the shutdown
was called a "safety pause." On Monday, DuPont referred to it as a
"voluntary safety stand down."
Menke said the stand-down
began around noon on Saturday. The company said the purpose "is to
reinforce the seriousness of this situation and maintain the site's
focus on safe work, consistent with DuPont's core
values."
"The site is undergoing a thorough investigation of
the units involved in the incidents," DuPont said.
Menke
said the pause or stand-down will go on "as long as it is needed. I'm
not giving a time to anyone and that includes my management. When it is
appropriate for us to resume operations, then we will do
so."
The Belle plant has about 400 DuPont workers and, with
the construction of Kureha Corp.'s plastics plant inside the fence line,
"we might have 250 contract employees on site," Menke
said.
"Everyone is coming to work," he said. "This is all
part of our process for safety improvement. We all work together.
Everybody's out doing their part in checking equipment, reviewing
procedures, taking a look at operating protocols to make sure that, yep,
it is right. We obviously fundamentally believe it is, but we want to
take a pause and make sure we're not missing something.
"The
units that had incidents were shut down immediately and won't be started
up until the results of those investigations are completed. We won't
start up anything until we get it fixed.
"We truly
do believe we have a safe operation. We demonstrated that in the past.
We also pay attention to it every day."
Carper
commended the company for taking a production pause. "I think that took
some courage because they had to know there would be a lot of scrutiny
along with that," he said. "I commend them for doing that. They've been
very cooperative with us.
"It's not our job to look into what happened inside
the plant gates or to probe into their proprietary matters," Carper
said. "We not only don't have that responsibility, we don't have the
expertise. That's the regulatory people's responsibility and the plant's
responsibility.
"Our function is to make certain we marshal the proper
resources to respond to an incident. Our responsibility is foremost to
protect the public at large, to send the necessary appropriate resources
into the plant and, importantly, to protect the people we send, whether
they are firefighters, first responders, whatever."
A
recording of the plant's call to Metro 911 asking for an ambulance shows
that the caller did not say what chemical was involved.
"The
information given to our dispatcher was incomplete at best," Carper said
early Monday. "I realize that in the middle of an emergency there are
problems. But that's what we're looking at right now. Before I pass
judgment I want to see it all and hear it all. But I have great concern
about this. When we send a paramedic to the scene where there's a
hostile environment, they deserve to know what it is. The same thing for
a police officer or firefighter or first responder."
Monday
afternoon Menke said he talked to Carper specifically about the plant's
call requesting an ambulance.
"I'll stand by my incident commander on this: His
primary focus was getting the employee in a position to be loaded
quickly." Menke said. "He didn't need to take an additional 30 seconds.
We were not trying to withhold information. All we needed to get across
at that time was, 'Get an ambulance, get it fast.' "
The
ambulance was not going into a hostile environment, Menke
said.
"It went to our medical facility, just inside our
gate. The person was decontaminated and loaded with the treatment
protocol. I believe our response was carried out the absolute best it
could be hoped for."
"We will be working with the county; we always do,"
Menke said. "If we need to do some things differently in the future, we
will. But I stand behind everyone and I give a lot of kudos to
Charleston General. They're first class. The individual got the best
treatment. I have nothing but praise for that organization. I think
everybody did everything right."
Carper said from the
county's perspective, "it boils down to what did they know, when did
they know it, what did we -- meaning the emergency response in the
county -- do, and what should we have done?
"Was
there any point in time when a public notification should have taken
place? I'm not criticizing -- I'm just saying we should look at it,"
Carper said. "Were there any reportable events that got reported or got
reported later than they should have? Was the management of each
incident in accordance with known standards? I'm talking, again, outside
the fence.
"These are the types of sensible things you do when
something happens. The difference here is there were four incidents in a
very compressed time period. I'm going to assume that's why they made
their safety pause decision, which I think was a very wise decision to
make."
===
Connecticut
Mansfield
Neighborhood Gets Explosive Scare
Residents
evacuated to community center
By JEFF
STOECKER and MEREDITH MAZOL
Updated
7:05 AM EST, Tue, Jan 26, 2010
Some Mansfield residents are back home on Tuesday
morning after an explosive scare that cleared the neighborhood.
Just after 5 p.m. on Monday, a Mansfield dad called
police. His teenage son was mixing chemicals to build an explosive, he
told them.
State
police went to the Hanks Hill Road home, where they found "various
suspicious chemical mixtures," according to a statement from state
police.
That mixture, police said,
contained =93possibly volatile explosives,=94 so they called the bomb
squad.
At around 8:30 p.m.,
troopers evacuated all the residences on Hank Hill Road. Officials were
prepared to set up shelter at the Mansfield Community Center until the
chemicals could be removed from the property and safely disposed of, but
everyone found places to wait as police investigated.
"We saw some policemen with flashlights going around
looking on the ground. We didn't know what was going on,=94 Pat McHugh,
one of the neighbors said.
There was
an explosion in the area yesterday, neighbors said. They heard another
explosion last week and more last fall, they said.
"We thought it had something to do with the utility
lines, you know, the electricity or the transformer,=94 McHugh said. =93I
guess not."
The family and the juvenile
are cooperating, police said. No arrests have been
announced.
