BREAKING:
CHEMICAL IRRITANT RELEASED IN HAND COLLEGE, STUDENTS QUARANTINED, http://thinksb.com/2010/09/breaking-ch
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Residents
in Hand College were jarred Sunday night by the release of a chemical
irritant on the third floor of the Tabler Quad
dormitory.
Shortly before 7pm, residents began to report feeling
sick in Hand College, and began evacuating the building. Early rumors
suggested that the cause was pepper spray that someone tried to
microwave, but the latest reports suggest that the irritant was perhaps
tear gas. Several residents were seen throwing up, according to Hand
College resident Mark Ihde, who was on the balcony of his room when the
first rumors came in.
=93Hazmat was on the scene, and told people they can=92t
go back in,=94 he said. =93Residents who were exposed were quarantined
off behind yellow police tape.=94
If reports of tear gas are
accurate-police have not yet confirmed the cause of the evacuation-the
immediate question would become where this student acquired tear gas.
It can be manufactured using simple every day products, but there are no
answers at this time as to whether the chemical was in the process of
being created, or whether it was made elsewhere and simply released,
perhaps accidentally, on campus.
As of 10:00pm, residents in
Hand were being allowed to return to their rooms after Hazmat gave the
all-clear, though Ihde said that third floor residents were still being
kept out until the exact details become clear.
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Residents of an evacuated
21-storey tower in downtown Vancouver could be locked out for several
more days after potentially dangerous chemicals were released inside the
building.
Trouble at the Electra Building began on Friday after
a urethane foam product that was being used to raise the buildings
concrete floor had an unexpected chemical reaction. Fire and Rescue
personnel evacuated the building for a few hours before determining the
fumes coming from the foam were not harmful.
Fire and
Hazmat teams returned on Saturday, however, forcing a second evacuation
as they reassessed the toxicity of the fumes.
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SLOATSBURG: Ramapo police
are investigating the death of a 50-year-old village man who may have
accidentally inhaled bleach while cleaning his porch
Saturday.
Sgt. Mark Briggs said the man, whose name has not been
released, was found in his yard about 9 a.m. He appeared to have
collapsed while cleaning an outdoor deck and was taken to Good Samaritan
Hospital in Suffern, where later died.
The
county hazmat team was and detectives were investigating the death
because of the household cleaning products he was
using.
"It's more of a precautionary measure" Briggs said.
Fire officials said the man might have accidentally inhaled the bleach
un-mixed while using it with a liquid sprayer.
-----------------------
VANCOUVER =97 A residential tower at the corner of
Burrard and Nelson Street in downtown Vancouver was evacuated for the
second time in as many days Saturday due to a mysterious chemical
spill.
"We don't know if it's harmful. That's what we're
trying to determine," said Rod MacDonald, battalion chief for the
Vancouver Fire Department.
Three major streets in the downtown core =97 Hornby,
Nelson, and Burrard =97 were closed Saturday morning as fire crews once
again felt the need to assess smoke and fumes being expelled from the
basement of the building.
On Friday, the fire department determined renovation
crews used too much urethane foam product to raise the concrete floor
and it somehow caught fire or became overheated thus causing a black
smoke to pour out of the doors in the 900-block of
Nelson.
-----------------------
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of
a blaze at a chemical plant near Preston.
Around 30
firefighters were drafted in to tackle the fire at Chemical Innovations
Limited (CIL), on Walton Summit business park, at around 5.15am
yesterday after reports of an unknown chemical going up in
flames.
The fire was quickly brought under control but
Operation Merlin, the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service=92s
multi-agency plan for dealing with hazardous substances, was declared
and police and decontamination experts were drafted in to assist with
the ordeal.
Four fire engines from across the region were kept on
site and roads in the area were closed by police for a number of hours
amid concerns the blaze could re-ignite.
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HARLINGEN =97 Firefighters worked for hours to control
a fire that ignited inside a cotton baler late Thursday, fighting the
blaze into early Friday morning.
A worker at the Valco
chemical plant, near the corner of Wilson Road and T Street, told
officials he saw a cotton baler erupt into flames at the site after
hearing a loud pop, Harlingen Fire Marshal Danny Warner said. The fire,
Warner said, broke out sometime between 10 and 11 p.m.
Thursday.
-----------------------
Demolition workers accidentally started a fire at an
old chemical manufacturing plant Friday morning.
The
facility, on the 700 block of South 11th Street in Donna, is used to
manufacture napthalene, a chemical used for dry cleaning solutions,
Mid-Valley emergency coordinator George Garrett said. The workers,
contracted by the City of Donna, were demolishing the building when the
chemicals inside caught fire.
=93Fortunately there was no explosion,=94 he said. =93It
was a highly voliatile chemical. The Donna Fire Department was able to
put it out very quickly using foam.=94
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WILMINGTON, DELAWARE // At the height of America=92s
coal-powered industrial age, DuPont was a large US industrial enterprise
run entirely on renewable energy.
The reason? Back in the 19th
century, the profits that fuelled what was then a family-owned business
came from making gunpowder.
The mills where DuPont gunpowder was mixed and refined
from charcoal and the imported minerals potassium nitrate and sulphur,
and the magazines that stored the powder, had to be kept strictly away
from flames and sparks.
At DuPont=92s water-powered mill complex at Hagley, on
the Brandywine River in the US state of Delaware, the safety rules were
correspondingly strict. =93All kind of play or disorderly fun is
prohibited=94, read a notice that the company=92s French immigrant
founder EI du Pont de Nemours posted on New Year=92s Day, 1811. He
banned alcohol from the site in 1818 after an explosion killed 40 people
and injured his wife Sophie. The accident was attributed to a DuPont
foreman=92s drinking.
-----------------------
DONNA - State inspectors are taking a closer look at
an old manufacturing plant in Hidalgo County. A toxic chemical is
leaking out of an old Silo and neighbors always worried about the
site.
The sight of these old Silo's makes Debra Cano
nervous. "I've always thought that they were dangerous," she said. "I've
got kids and I plan to live here for years. I don't want anything to
happen to my kids."
After 24 years her quiet fears are front and
center.
A fire erupted during demolition at the old
manufacturing plant Friday morning. A chemical used in dry cleaning
called naphtha started leaking. Nearly a foot of the toxic chemical was
left inside one of the silo's.
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If a coke bottle has something other than soda in it,
and a lithium battery strip has been added, don=92t touch it, San Luis
Obispo County sheriff=92s officials warned Friday.
A maintenance man for the Rancho Del Arroyo mobile
home park in Oceano learned this the hard way Friday morning when he
picked up three bottles that had some liquid residue inside, sheriff=92s
officials said.
He tossed them into his ATV
and drove off at about 11:30 a.m., but within seconds one of the bottles
exploded and sprayed the man with liquid, burning his clothes and
possibly his skin, said sheriff=92s representative Rob
Bryn.
The mobile home park is in
the 2700 block of Cienaga Street.
The
maintenance man, who was not identified, assumed a bomb had gone off,
Bryn said.
He was able to get out of
the vehicle before a second bottle exploded, but complained of pain
after being decontaminated and checked by emergency personnel, Bryn
added.
Investigators believe the
juice and soda bottles were discarded from a methamphetamine
lab.
-----------------------
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - A building had to be evacuated
in Vancouver over a chemical incident that is also causing some traffic
closures in the Downtown area.
Firefighters were initially called out to a reported hazmat
incident at Hornby and Nelson, but ran into a huge amount of smoke when
they got there. It appears construction crews working in the basement of
the old B.C. Hydro building may have used too much industrial cleaner
trying to raise up a floor, creating a nasty, toxic
smoke.
People are asked to stay away from the area, because
the chemical is an irritant. Fire crews say they hope to have the
incident cleaned up in a couple of hours.
-----------------------
A
17-year-old boy suffered second-degree burns after a teacher=92s biology
class demonstration exploded into a two-metre ball of
flames.
Daniel Macandog was sitting near the front of a
science lab, where teacher Andrew McGreal was conducting an experiment
for his Grade 11 biology class at Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute
on Friday morning.
Students say McGreal put a cup of alcohol in an empty
water cooler jug, and then lit a small stick and placed in the opening.
When nothing happened, he added more alcohol, swished it around, and
stuck the flame back inside.
Immediately a huge flame shot out of the jug =93like a
blowtorch,=94 said 17-year-old Ashley Dembinski, who was sitting next to
Macandog, about two metres from the experiment. Her jeans caught on
fire, but she managed to pat out the flames.
=93It
just came shooting right out,=94 she said. =93It hit (Macandog) and he
completely caught on fire.=94
Covered in flames, Macandog panicked.
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Sept. 17--The San Marcos Fire Department's hazardous
materials team responded to a chemical leak that originated on the Texas
State University campus Thursday morning.
Officials
discovered around 7 a.m. that approximately 450 gallons of sulfuric acid
used to clean equipment leaked from the university's physical plant on
Sessom Drive.
They said that although a retention basin in place
collected the majority of the acid, a "small amount"
escaped.
Response crews washed the spilled chemical into nearby
storm drains near the intersection of North LBJ Drive and Sessom Drive
and used soda ash to render the acid inert, officials
said.
Texas State spokesperson Jayme Blaschke said that
while the drainage ultimately empties into the San Marcos River, the
spill there was contained and a pumper truck removed the
chemicals.
-----------------------
Country
Fire Authority crews are working to contain a toxic chemical spill
outside the water treatment plant at Maffra in
Gippsland.
An acid used to add fluoride to the water supply is
leaking from a tanker parked outside the plant.
Police
have set up road blocks and children at a nearby primary school have
been confined to their classrooms.
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