Apex firefighters and public-safety workers showed "the highest level of skill and expertise" when they responded to a chemical plant fire two years ago that led to the evacuation of about 17,000 people, according to a new federal report.

Released on Monday, the U.S. Fire Administration report noted that the incident revealed the need for a better plan to evacuate wheelchair-bound residents and other "special-needs citizens" and a few other emergency-planning improvements. Overall, however, the report praised Apex for a well-planned, textbook response to the fire at Environmental Quality, a storage facility for hazardous chemicals.

"The key element contributing to the success of operations was that Apex had a very well-defined plan that was practiced routinely," the report said.

Thirty residents sought medical treatment for respiratory issues and skin irritation, and 12 police officers and one firefighter were treated for respiratory difficulties. It was two days before many residents were allowed to return home after the fire.

Apex Town Manager Bruce Radford credited the success of the town's response to a plan devised after an ice storm crippled Apex four years earlier. Radford said Apex Fire Chief Mark Haraway made it a priority to reorganize the town's emergency command structure after the storm.

"This is a solid 'A' report," Radford said Tuesday of the federal review. "We're very proud now, as we were then, of how it went as well as it did."

The U.S. Fire Administration is a division of the Department of Homeland Security that reports on major fires to share lessons learned on firefighting tactics and disaster preparedness.

The federal report said Apex should improve plans to evacuate special-needs residents and noted that the remote staging area for reserve firefighters and equipment was too close to the fire. "The exposure of many later-needed pieces of equipment and the evacuation of the communications center could have been disastrous to the final outcome of this incident," the report said.

Haraway said the recommendations offered in the federal report were addressed already by the town in its own assessment report completed several months after the fire.

"We have been working for a long time to develop a plan that we felt was all-inclusive of the different hazards that we had identified in the area," he said.

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