Apex fire prompts call for tighter rules

Two major industrial accidents in North Carolina are spurring calls for tougher national standards over workplaces that expose employees and the public to certain hazards.

A 2006 fire at the Environmental Quality plant, a storage facility for hazardous chemicals, forced the evacuation of thousands of people in Apex and sent firefighters to the hospital with respiratory problems. Three years earlier, a dust explosion at the West Pharmaceuticals plant in Kinston killed six and injured 38 workers.

Investigators with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency that probes chemical accidents but lacks enforcement authority, view each accident as representative of broader industry problems with dust explosions and hazardous-waste fires.

On Wednesday, the safety board called for a national fire code for hazardous-waste storage facilities, culminating its investigation of the Environmental Quality fire.

Lacking regulatory authority, the board called on the Environmental Technology Council, a trade association representing about 80 percent of the hazardous-waste industry, to work with the National Fire Protection Association to help establish a national fire code for hazardous-waste facilities. It would take two to three years. The guidelines are typically incorporated by state and local governments into their fire codes.

"We are recommending new measures to prevent similar accidents in the future and to reduce the consequences of any accidents that do occur," said William Wark, a chemical safety board member.

The chemical safety board said the hazardous-waste trade group had agreed to support a new fire code. The group could not be reached for comment.

The board also urged the Environmental Protection Agency to require hazardous-waste facilities, which EPA regulates, to provide state and local emergency responders with specific written information about the type, quantities and location of all hazardous materials.

Late, not helpful

Safety board inspectors said Apex fire fighters didn't get a list of chemicals warehoused at the EQ plant until two days after the Oct. 5, 2006, explosion, and the thick file wasn't an accurate inventory that could help them understand what they were up against.

Safety board officials said accurate, current information on chemical hazards is essential to emergency responders and a well-informed community.

"We are having discussions about their recommendations with state emergency planning directors," said Laura Niles, an EPA spokesman in Atlanta. "They made some good suggestions. We have to look at our current regulatory authorities and review those and see how we can work in those suggestions."

Investigators determined that the EQ facility was not prepared for a fire that might occur after hours when no one was present. The facility lacked fire walls and automatic fire-detection systems. As a result, a small spark became an inferno that destroyed the site, rocked nearby neighborhoods with explosions and created a gaseous plume that drifted for miles. Dozens of mislabeled chemical oxygen tanks, which supply oxygen to airline passengers in an emergency, likely fueled the fire.

When firefighters arrived, they had no idea what kind of chemicals might have fed the fire.

Wark said the EQ fire was part of a more general problem. The investigation found that there have been 23 hazardous-waste fires in the United States in the past five years. More than a third led to evacuations or disruptions of transportation.

There are about 530 hazardous-waste facilities nationwide. Some have sophisticated fire-detection and -suppression equipment, while others, such as EQ, have only portable fire extinguishers.