Anaheim Fire Put Out; 7,500 Can Go Home

Fire and health officials Tuesday evening lifted an evacuation order for all of the estimated 7,500 Orange County inhabitants who fled their homes four days ago in the wake of a toxic chemical fire in Anaheim.

At 8 p.m., Anaheim Fire Chief Robert Simpson announced that a team of 25 firefighters had finally brought under control a toxic blaze that began burning Saturday eve ning at a fertilizer warehouse and spewed dangerous fumes over a square-mile residential area.

“We can now say that the fire is under control,” Simpson said at a press conference held at the Anaheim emergency command center. He said most of the evacuees from Anaheim, Fullerton and Placentia could begin returning to their neighborhoods by 10 p.m.

However, Simpson cautioned that a four-square-block area around the Larry Fricker Co. warehouse, site of the fire, would remain cordoned off for about one week because of the lingering possibility of health threats.

The restriction is expected to affect about 500 Anaheim workers at businesses in an area bordered on the north by State College Boulevard, on the south by the Riverside Freeway, on the west by Baxter Street and on the east by Daly Street.

Immediately after Simpson’s announcement, police began visiting the three evacuation centers that had been set up at local schools by the Red Cross and distributed special permits allowing residents to return to their homes.

Other residents who had not been staying at the evacuation centers would also be issued permits, officers said.

At the centers, the news was greeted with applause and relief by an estimated 445 evacuees, many of whom had been sleeping on cots and eating cafeteria meals for the past four days.

“I’m a happy man,” said Ramon M. Romo, 42, of Placentia. He and his family of eight had spent Monday night at a friend’s two-bedroom apartment and were preparing to spend Tuesday evening at a shelter set up at Esperanza High School in Anaheim.

Across town, at the Katella High School shelter, Gloria Gomez bit her fingers nervously and shushed her young daughter, Michele, as she awaited news from Steve Cooper, the Red Cross director of the emergency center.

Breaking the News

When Cooper broke the good news, she smiled and said, “I thought we weren’t going to get home at all.”

Within minutes, the roomful of evacuees began folding up cots, putting away blankets they had been given and rounding up family members for the trip back to their homes.

Meanwhile, police and Red Cross officials distributed information about how to deal with food that might have been contaminated in homes and on how to handle household pets that had been left behind.

Officials who had been leading the fight against the toxic blaze said they had checked the area thoroughly before allowing residents back into the affected neighborhood.

“We feel we can be very confident to let people back into the area. . . . We feel there is no hazard at this time,” Dr. Philip Edelman, medical director of the regional poison center at UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, said at the press conference.

Edelman said that extensive testing of the chemical residue and fumes from the warehouse fire “indicates that the area directly adjacent to the facility has no contamination.”

Simpson said that the decision to allow residents to return to their homes was based on air monitoring tests conducted by the Air Quality Management District. The tests found no health hazards, although pesticide vapors and nitric fumes still persist in the plant, he said.

Earlier, the three-mile stretch of the Orange Freeway that was closed for most of Monday was reopened later that evening after fumes in the area diminished. However, some exit and entrance ramps within the evacuation area remained closed.

No Easy Task

Extinguishing the smoldering fire was no easy task, according to Capt. Michael Rohde, a member of the county Fire Department’s hazardous material team, one of many firefighting units that battled the blaze.

Firefighters were working in a “very contaminated area” and had to neutralize an array of chemicals with sand, water and ash, he said. Rohde said the warehouse floor was 4 to 6 inches deep with chemicals--many of them still unidentified--ranging in color from white to deep purple.

Earlier in the day, Simpson said the threat of an explosion at the warehouse had largely passed. In addition to Anaheim and county fire crews, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and a Coast Guard strike team were also called to the scene.

Two of the three smoldering fires inside the pesticide and fertilizer warehouse were extinguished Monday afternoon. The final fire, in a stack of chemical materials 15 to 20 feet tall, was brought under control several hours later.

Rohde said that, based on an examination inside the building, it appeared that “some processing had gone on that would be considered illegal. That is under investigation by the Anaheim Fire Department at this time.”

About 2,000 Anaheim residents were evacuated Saturday night and Sunday because of the fumes, but authorities expanded the evacuation area into Placentia and a commercial district of southern Fullerton on Monday after fumes were detected in the outlying areas.

Eighteen people, including four firefighters, were treated and released for minor injuries incurred in breathing the toxic vapors or making contact with the chemicals.

One man, Joe Stacewicz, was arrested when he tried to cross a police line and retrieve a guitar from his Anaheim apartment.

But most of the attention over the past four days was focused on the growing number of evacuees, who anxiously awaited word from authorities when they could return home.

Concern Grew

At Esperanza High School, for example, about 70 people, most of them from the La Jolla barrio in Placentia, grew steadily more concerned throughout the day.

Longino Dias, 83, said he stayed up most of Monday night in the school’s gymnasium caring for his 79-year-old wife, Ines, who is blind and confined to a wheelchair. Red Cross spokeswoman Edith Hasse said the organization would put the couple up in a local hotel.

Laurie Unamann, 31, of Anaheim, said she spent about eight hours Monday trying to find her two children after police told her that they had been evacuated while she was at work. She drove to each of the three evacuation centers before finding Stacey, 5, and Matthew, 2, about 10:30 p.m. still in the day care center near her apartment building.

At Katella High School, Gordon Wahlgin said he was worried about his two cats, which had been shut in his garage since Sunday. “We put a can of food and water in there, but they could have kicked it over,” he said.

Simpson said the threat of an explosion was lessened after firefighters removed four tons of ammonium nitrate from the warehouse.

“Most of the explosive materials have been pulled or isolated from the building. Hopefully, we’ve minimized the threat of an explosion,” Simpson said.

Rohde said that investigative teams have searched outside the Fricker property to see if there was any residue on plants but that there appears to be none.

Most of the people who left the emergency centers were visibly relieved. But others were angry that they had been dislocated.

Dave Hagmaier, 30, said he looked forward to returning to his Placentia home, but added that something needed to be done to avert similar toxic emergencies.

“It’s a big hardship for citizens,” he said. “It seems like there’s insufficient security at these plants.”

Times staff writers Josh Getlin, Andy Rose, Julie Anne Dart and Roxana Kopetman contributed to the preparation of this story.