Oxygen generators fueled Apex blaze

RALEIGH -- Mislabeled aircraft chemical oxygen generators "most likely" fueled a massive 2006 fire in an Apex hazardous waste warehouse, the federal Chemical Safety Board said today.

Investigators said the devices should never have been in the warehouse because they were unused. Only oxygen generators that have been expended are considered safe enough for transport and storage.

Chemical oxygen generators are used in commercial aircraft to supply supplemental oxygen to passengers in drop-down masks should the cabin depressurize. The devices are considered hazardous because of the explosive materials inside them.

Investigators do not know whether the Oct. 5 explosion was sparked by the generators, which were past their projected service life but remained fully charged. Even if they did not spark the blast, they almost certainly fed the flames, investigators said.

EQ Industrial Services, the owner of the storehouse, may not have known that it had the potentially dangerous oxygen generators in its Apex warehouse.

The Chemical Safety Board said an aircraft maintenance facility in Mobile, Ala., sent the generators to a hazardous waste facility in Birmingham without activating and expending their contents. The receiving facility misidentified them as general oxidizer waste on shipping documents.

The labels did not hint at the dangerous cargo inside, according to the Chemical Safety Board.

The board, an independent federal agency, investigates industrial chemical accidents but does not levy fines or penalties.

It announced that it was issuing a safety advisory concerning the dangers of transporting and handling unspent oxygen generators.

Robert Doyle, a spokesman for EQ Industrial Services, said in a statement that the company was confident that the public and industry will benefit from increased safety precautions resulting from the Chemical Safey Board's findings.

"This safety advisory alert will allow for safer management, transport and disposal of these oxygen generators at aircraft maintenance facilities and hazardous waste facilities," Doyle said.

There have been national concerns about the proper handling of oxygen generators since at least 1996, when a ValuJet plane caught fire after taking off in Miami.

The fire and crash killed 110 people. The National Transportation Safety Board traced the fire to mislabeled oxygen-generating canisters in a cargo hold.

Tests after the crash showed that oxygen generators can spark fires, in part because they generate intense heat once they are triggered to provide emergency oxygen.

The Chemical Safety Board said it was continuing its investigation and plans to release a final report by the end of the year.

Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly welcomed its findings so far.

“While it is very troubling to learn that such dangerous materials were stored at this location, CSB is to be commended for issuing this safety advisory," Weatherly said in a news release. "We can but hope that other communities can learn from our local incident and join us in the efforts to ensure the appropriate siting of such facilities away from residential populations."

Investigators are continuing to look at the operations of EQ as well as national regulations that govern hazardous waste facilities, Board Member William B. Wark said in a news release.

Even with the oxygen generators fueling the blaze, "this accident may have been avoided" if there had been automated fire detection and extinguishing systems at the warehouse, Wark said.

"We are looking at fire protection practices; we note that there was no automatic fire detection or suppression system to extinguish the blaze after it started; we also note the lack of firewalls to separate hazardous materials from one another," Wark said.

He said the investigation also has found "issues concerning the lack of information available to emergency responders during this incident."